You are right. I think of Manoukhin more than anyone can imagine. I have as much faith in him as Koteliansky has. I hardly dare think of him fully. No, I dare not. It is too much. But about money. I have 100 saved for this Last Chance and as soon as I know he can help me I shall make more. Work is ease, joy, light to me if I am happy. I shall not borrow from anyone if I can possibly help it.

I am not frightened of money, for some blessed reason. I know I can make it. Once I am well I can make all I want. I don't want much. In fact, my plans go on and page 172 on, and when I go to sleep I dream the treatment is over and I am running, or walking swiftly and carelessly by and no one knows I have been ill, no one hands me a chair in a shop. Ah, it is too much!

This awful writing is frozen writing, Brett. I am writing with two icicles for fingers. We have 6 foot of snow here, all is frozen over and over, even the bird's tails. Is not that hideous cruelty? I have a large table for these precious atoms daily, and the first cocoanut in Switzerland is the Big Joint. They can't yet believe in the cocoanut. It overwhelms them. A special issue of the Bird Times is being issued, the bird who discovered it is to be photographed, interviewed and received at Pluckingham Palace and personally conducted tours are being arranged. What with them and my poor dear pussy-wee, who got out to-day and began to scratch, scratched away, kept at it, sat up, took a deep breath, scratched his ear, wiped his whiskers, scratched on, Scratched, until finally only the tip of a quivering tail was to be seen and he was rescued by the gentle Ernestine. He wrung his little paws in despair. Poor lamb! to think he will not be able to scratch through until April. I suppose snow is beautiful. I hate it. It always seems to me a kind of humbug—a justification of mystery, and I hate mystery. And then there is no movement. All is still, white, cold, deathly, eternal. Every time I look out I feel inclined to say I refuse it. But perhaps if one goes about and skims over, all is different.

I'm working at such a big story that I still can only just see the end in my imagination … the longest by far I've ever written. It's called The Doves' Nest. But winter is a bad black time for work, I think. One's brain gets congealed. It is very hard.