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About the punctuation in The Stranger. No, my dash isn't quite a feminine dash. (Certainly when I was young it was). But it was intentional in that story. I was trying to do away with the three dots. They have been so abused by female and male writers that I fight shy of them—much tho' I need them. The truth is—punctuation is infernally difficult. If I had time I'd like to write an open letter to the A. on the subject. Its boundaries need to be enlarged. But I won't go into it now. I'll try, however, to remember commas. It's a fascinating subject, ça, one that I'd like to talk over with you. If only there was time I'd write all one wants to write. There seems less and less time. And more and more books arrive. That's not a complaint. But it is rather cursed that we should have to worry about when we might be writing our own books—isn't it?

And about Poison.¹ I could write about that for pages. But I'll try and condense what I've got to say. The story is told by (evidently) a worldly, rather cynical (not wholly cynical) man against himself (but not altogether) when he was so absurdly young. You know how young by his idea of what woman is. She has been up to now, only the vision, only she who passes. You realise that? And here he has put all his passion into this Beatrice. It's promiscuous love, not understood as such by him; perfectly understood as such by her. But you realise the vie de luxe they are living—the very table—sweets, liqueurs, lilies, pearls. And you realise? she expects a letter from someone calling her away? Fully expects it? That accounts for her farewell and her declaration. And when it doesn't come even her commonness peeps out—the newspaper touch of such a woman. She can't disguise her chagrin. She gives herself away… He, of course, laughs at it now, and laughs at her. Take what he says about her ‘sense of order’ and the crocodile. But he also regrets the self page 82 who, dead privately, would have been young enough to have actually wanted to Marry such a woman. But I meant it to be light—tossed off—and yet through it—Oh, subtly—the lament for youthful belief. These are the rapid confessions one receives sometimes from a glove or a cigarette or a hat.