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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume II

October 9, 1922

To the Hon. Dorothy Brett

Don't be cross with me if I am dull just now. My cough is so much worse that I am a cough—a living, walking or lying down cough. Why I am allowed to stay in this hotel I can't imagine. But there it is. I must have terribly kind neighbours. As soon as it gets better I shall present a bouquet to the left door and to the right. “From a grateful Patient.” It's only the X-rays doing their worst before they do their better. But it's a nuisance. Such a queer effect on the boulevards here: the trees are out for a second Spring—frail small leaves, like you see in April. Lyrics in middle age—love song by old chestnuts over 50. All the same one's heart aches to see them. There is something tragic in Spring.

If you knew how vivid the little house is, but vivid beyond words. Not only for itself. It exists apart from page 253 all—it is a whole in life. I think of you… One has such kindly soft tender feelings—

But to work—to work. One must take just those feelings and work with them. Life is a mystery. We can never get over that. Is it a series of deaths and series of killings? It is that too. But who shall say where death ends and resurrection begins. That's what one must do. Give it, the idea of resurrection the power that death would like to have. Be born again and born again faster than we die…

Tell me, why do you “warn” me? What mustn't I be “too sure” of? You mystify me. Do you think I am too sure of Love? But if Love is there one must treat it as though one were sure of it—How else? If it is not there I'd rather be sure of that, too. Or do you mean something else?

It has turned as cold as ice—and colder. The sun shines but it is soleil glacé. It's due North and due East, all mixed up in the same frozen bag. If it wasn't for the blue up above one would cry.

Don't let our next meeting be in Paris. It's no fun meeting in hotels. And sitting on beds and eating in nasty old restaurants. Let's wait a little longer and meet in the south in a warm still place where I can put a cricket at your third ear so that you can hear its song.