Here is your letter about the W.'s house. They are lucky, aren't they? Shall we really have such a house? It's not too late? We don't just make up dreams—precious dreams? It's not “all over”? I get overwhelmed at times that it is all over, that we've seen each other for the last time (imagine it!) (No, don't imagine it!) and that these letters will one day be published and people will read something in them, in their queer finality, that “ought to have told us.” This feeling runs exactly parallel with the other—the feeling of hope. They are two roads, I can't keep to either. Now I find myself on one, now on the other. Even when you tell me about the table I think How perfect! but at the very same moment I think Will he sell it? Of course not. He must have a table after all. It's all part of what I've said before, haven't I? I say it so many thousand times over in my mind that I forget whether I've written it. Once the defences are fallen between you and death they page 291 are not built up again. It needs such a little push, hardly that, just a false step, just not looking, and you are over. Mother, of course, lived in this state for years. Ah, but she lived surrounded. She had her husband, her children, her home, her friends, physical presences, darling treasures to be cherished—and I've not one of these things. I have only my work. That might be enough for you in like case. But God! God! I'm rooted in life. Even if I hate life, I can't deny it. I spring from it and feed on it. What an egoist the woman is!

And now, just supposing by a miracle the blissful thing should happen…. I don't remember where it was I stayed with the W.'s. It was near Marlboro' and the country was beautiful. There were forest glades—a beautiful forest. They took me for a walk that was miles too long: I remember that. I remember standing in a rank-smelling field and seeing them far ahead and waving very gaily when they looked round….

But the country does not really matter a great deal, does it? As long as it is country and one can grow things (Oh, Make it happen!). But the money question is pretty dreadful. As to furniture, that we can always accumulate Eric-or-little-by-little…. I think we might do it by not paying down. We overdo the paying down, I believe. Other people never have their money in bags. But first we ought to find the house, take it and then consider. That is my idea. The house (like the Jew) first. (I never understood that text.)

Oh God! When you say we'll have to get a builder in, I suddenly dimly see a hall, a staircase with shavings, a man with a rule and a flat pencil measuring for cupboards. I hear a saw and the piece of sawn wood creaks and tumbles (such a final sound). I hear the squee-gee of a plane, and the back door of the house is open and the smell of the uncared garden—so different from the smell of the cared one—floats through, and I put my hand on your sleeve and rest a little against you, and you say Do you agree? and I nod Yes….

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But these dreams are so dear that they feel unearthly—they are dreams of heaven. How could they become reality? This is reality—bed, medicine bottle, medicine glass marked with tea and table spoons, guiacol tablets…. Come, tell me, tell me exactly what I am to do to recover my faith. I was always the one who had a kind of overplus of it; you hated it in me; it seemed to deny you so many of your more subtle emotions. You made me feel it was so crude a thing—my belief that wouldn't be shaken.

Take this all coolly: it's all—what? Just add to my diseases a touch of melancholia, let us say.