As for me I am in the open day and night. I never am in a room with the windows shut. By great good fortune I've got Marie who every day looks after me better. And she is so sympathetic that all she cooks tastes especially good. She looks after me and anxiously asks if “la viande était assez saignante”—but sanely—in the way one not only can stand, but one loves, and when I go into the kitchen and say, “Marie, je tremble de faim” her “tant mieux” as she butters you a tartine is just absolutely right. So you see I do count my blessings; this house, this climate, and this good soul…

It's blowing guns to-day—a choppy sea—my favourite sea, brilliant blue with the white lifting—lifting as far as one can see, rather big unbroken waves near the shore. Butterflies love a day like this. They love to fling themselves up in the air and then be caught by the wind and rocked and flung and lightly fluttered. They pretend to be frightened. They cling as long as they can to a leaf and then—take a butterfly long breath—up they go—away they sail, quivering with joy, and delight. It must be a kind of surf bathing for them—flinging themselves down the wind.

You know how when one woman carries the new born baby the other woman approaches and lifts the handkerchief from the tiny face and bends over and says “Bless page 51 it.” But I am always wanting to lift the handkerchief off lizards' faces and pansies' faces and the house by moonlight. I'm always waiting to put a blessing on what I see. It's a queer feeling.