It's true the melancholy fit is on me, at present. But, as I told you in the S. of F. (seemed always to be telling page 179 poor you) that to be alone (i.e., without you) and to be utterly homeless, just uprooted, as it were, and tossed about on any old strange tide, is utterly horrible to me and always will be, even though I were twelve stone and a prizefighter—though I own my horror would be a bit ridiculous then. However, I fully, freely acknowledge that it's got to be for the present and my only salvation lies in drowning my melancholy fit in a flood of work.

But what about A.? you ask. Oh, yes, of course I see A. occasionally, as much as both of us want to, for an hour at a time perhaps; but you know it's all on the awfully jolly surface. I can't really talk to A. at all. Still, it's nice to have her here and she's a distraction and “too kind for words….”

Passons oultre.

It's Sunday. Cornwall in black with black thread gloves promenades on the edge of the sea: little tin bells ring and the Midday Joint is in the air. Pas de soleil. Low tide and the sea sounds to have got up very late and not found its voice yet.

Damned queer thing. I have dreamed for two nights in succession of the name of a street rue Maidoc. “Not rue Medoc,” says Chummie, “but rue Maidoc.” There is an exhibition of pictures there and Chummie is showing 3—“two landscapes and a portrait by Leslie H. Beauchamp.” We idled down the street afterwards arm in arm. It was very hot. He fanned himself with the catalogue. And he kept saying, “Look, dear,” and then we stopped, as one person, and looked for about 100 years, and then went on again. I woke and heard the sea sounding in the dark, and my little watch raced round and round, and the watch was like a symbol of infinite existence….

There is a circulating library here. Not quite bare. It's got In a German Pension and Eve's Ransom by Gissing. I took out the second yesterday. Although, like all poor Gissing's, it's written with cold wet feet under a wet umbrella, I do feel that if his feet had been dry and the umbrella furled, it would have been extremely good. As page 180 it is, the woman of the book is quite a little creation. The whole is badly put together, and there is so much that is entirely irrelevant. He's very clumsy, very stiff, and, alas, poor wretch! almost all his ‘richness’ is eaten up by fogs, catarrh, Gower Street, landladies with a suspicious eye, wet doorsteps, Euston Station. He must have had an infernal time.

I'll send you back D. W.'s Journal in a day or two, just in case you have a moment to glance into them—to refresh yourself with the sight of W. sticking peas and D. lying in the orchard with the linnets fluttering round her. Oh, they did have a good life.

Well, I'm going to work now till lunch.

P.S.—Please don't forget to tell me the moment Harrison sends my story [Bliss] back. Back it will come, of course. But I want to know at once.