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… I am thankful to know that you are better and that we shall soon be able to see each other again. What a dreadful time you have had, I had no idea that the measles were so formidable and overwhelming. I envy you going to the sea—even for a few days. Oh, I have such a longing for the sea as I write, at this moment. To stand on the shore long enough to feel the land behind one withdrawn into silence and the loud tumbling of the waves rise and break over one's whole being….

But the English summer sea is not what I mean. I mean that wild untamed water that beats about my own forlorn island. Why on earth do I call it ‘forlorn.’ My bank Manager assures me that it's a perfect little gold mine and whenever I go down to the Bank of New Zealand I turn over a heap of illustrated papers full of pictures of electric trains and American buildings and fashionable ladies and gentlemen who might have walked out of the Piccadilly Grill…. But all that sham and vulgarity is hard to believe in: I don't believe in it all. There is another side that you would believe in too. Ah, my dear, I know the most heavenly places that cannot be spoiled—and that I shall go back to as surely as if they were ‘Dixie.’ And I shall think of you, and wish to God I expect that I were sitting opposite you at the Maison Lyons! Life is a queer, a damn queer business!

It's a golden day. The blinds are down. I have some big yellow lilies in the studio. The garden door is open and the fig tree throws a wavy pattern on the floor and walls among big soft spots of sunlight. Four o'clock in the afternoon. I've been sitting at this table since morning, writing and smoking. And somewhere quite near someone is playing very old-fashioned dance tunes on a cheap piano, things like the Lancers, you know. Some minute part of me not only dances to them but goes faithfully through, Ladies in the Centre, Visiting, Set to page 77 Corners, and I can even feel the sensation of clasping young warm hands in white silk gloves, and shrinking from Maggie Owen's hand in Ladies Chain because she wore no gloves at all—

Talking about dancing reminds me of last Saturday night, when I really ‘saw’—–for the first time. It was at a show at Margaret Morris's theatre. He was there with two very worn and chipped looking ladies—the saddest looking remnants of ladies—in fact they reminded me of those cups without saucers that you sometimes see outside a china shop—all-on-this-tray-one-penny. But—–was really impressive looking. I seemed to see his mind, his haggard mind, like a strange forbidding country, full of lean sharp peaks and pools lit with a gloomy glow, and trees bent with the wind and vagrant muffled creatures tramping their vagrant way. Everything exhausted and finished—great black rings where the fires had been, and not a single fire even left to smoulder. And then he reminded me of that man in Crime and Punishment who finds a little girl in his bed in that awful hotel the night before he shoots himself, in that appalling hotel. But I expect this is all rubbish, and he's really a happy man and fond of his bottle and a goo-goo eye. But I don't think so.