Another jour glacé—so cold indeed that the country might be under deep, deep snow. It's very quiet, and through the white curtains the sea shows white as milk. I am still in my bye, for I have just had mon petit déjeuner. It was good. I made it boiling in my tommy cooker. I really think that Maman must have gone to see a fire-eater or been frightened by one before I was born. Why else should I always demand of my boissons that they be in a ‘perfeck bladge” before I drink ’em? And now I am waiting for the courier.

Alas! the same light quick steps won't carry it to me any more—for Juliette is gone. She came into my room last evening in an ugly stiff black dress without an apron. I noticed she had her boots on and that she was very thickly powdered.

She leaned against a chair, looking at the floor, and then suddenly she said, with a fling of her arm, “Alors je pars— page 150 pour toujours…. J'ai reçu des mauvaises nouvelles … une dépêche …mère gravement malade viens de suite … alors! eh ben, voilà … y a rien à faire.” And then suddenly she took a deep sobbing breath. “J'ai bien de la peine!” I was so sorry that I wanted to put my arms round her. I could only hold her warm soft hand and say, “Ah, ma fille, je le regrette, je le regrette de tout cœeur.”

She lives on the coast of Corsica. The idea of the journey, of course, terrifies her. And then she was so happy—“si bien bien bien ici!” and the beau temps is just coming and she did not know how she could pack her things, for she came here “avec toutes mes affaires enveloppées d'un grand mouchoir de maman.” But she'd never saved and always spent. “Il me faut acheter un grand panier sérieux pour les emballer.”

Of course she thinks she'll never come back here again; she's in the desperate state of mind that one would expect of her, and she wept when we said Goodbye. “Qui vous donnerait les fleurs main-ten-ant, Madame, vous qui les aimez tant? C'était mon grand plaisir—mon grand plaisir!” I saw her in the hall before she left wearing a hideous hat and clasping her umbrella and panier sérieux as though they had cried “To the Boats!” already.

I must not write any more about her, for after all, she can't mean much to you. She has meant an enormous lot to me. I have really loved her—and her songs, her ways, her kneeling in front of the fire and gronding the bois vert—her rushes into the room with the big bouquets and her way of greeting me in the morning as though she loved the day, and also the fact that she distinguished your letters from others. “Ce n'est pas la lettre—malheur!” Goodbye Juliette, my charming double stock in flower. I'll never forget you. You were a real being. You had roots.

This morning it was Madeleine, the laundrymaid, Juliette's friend, promoted, who brought me mon déjeuner. Très fière, in consequence. With her fringe combed down page 151 into her big eyes, a dark red blouse and a scalloped apron—I could write about these two girls for ever, I feel to-day. Yes, I'll write just a bit of a story about them, and spare you any more.

You remember writing to me in your criticism of “Je ne parle pas français” that Dick Harmon seemed to have roots? It struck me then and the sound of it has gone echoing in me. That's really the one thing I ask of people and the one thing I can't do without. I feel so immensely conscious of my own roots. You could pull and pull and pull at me—I'll not come out. You could cut off my flowers—others will grow … And I could divide up the people with or without them in a jiffy. And although one may be sometimes deceived—sometimes they are so clever, the bad ones: they plant themselves and look so fair that those two little children we know so well stand hand in hand admiring them and giving them drops of water out of the tin watering-can—they fade at the going down of the sun and the two little children are perfectly disgusted with them for being such cheats, and they hurl them over the garden wall before going back to their house for the night.

Well, well! The heap of dead ones that we have thrown over. But ah, the ones that remain! All the English poets. I see Wordsworth, par exemple, so honest and living and pure.

Here's the courier.

Good God! Your Tuesday letter, and I read “Wordsworth—so honest and so pure.” And remember my letter yesterday, and here is yours in answer—just the same!