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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume II

— Sunday — October 24, 1920

To Sydney and Violet Schif


Sunday

I did not answer your letter at the time because I was ill, and I become utterly weary of confessing it.

Especially as it's the kind of thing one does so hate to hear—one can't really sympathise with. People who are continually crying out are exasperating. And they (or at any rate I) are dreadfully conscious of it.

page 59

But now that I have been let out on ticket of leave at least—I long to write to you. You are never far from my thoughts. Some afternoons I feel positive that the voiture down below there is come from Roquebrune and that in another moment or two you will be here on the terrace. But there is too much to talk about. In London there never seems time. One is always just beginning when one is whirled away again. Here, one is so uninterrupted, it is like one immensely long night and one immensely long day.

But it takes long before the tunes cease revolving in one's head, before the sound of the clapping and the sensation of the crowd ceases to possess one. One cannot hail solitude as one can hail a dark cab. To disentangle oneself completely takes long… Nevertheless, I believe one must do it—and no less—if one wants to work.