It has just stopped raining and is steamy, misty and cool. I'm out on the verandah: the sea sounds heavy, so is the air—one feels wonderfully tired. The Nation came yesterday but no letter.

Not having heard from you I feel a bit dumb: I feel as though I were standing at a door waiting for it to open—or sitting up against it (more like that) just waiting. I wish I were a great deal more self-supporting. It's a thousand times harder for me to write reviews here where I have no one to talk things over with. I'm ‘out of it’ and see so few papers and never hear talk. I have to get into full diver's clothes and rake the floor of the unprofitable sea. All the same it is my life: it saves me.

The woodman and his mate came yesterday. I feel a bit sentimental about him, because last time he was here you were here. He looked at the picture of Berne. “C'est à Londres, ça? Londres est sur le lac de Londres, n'est-ce pas?” And finding it was also a mirror, he page 277 twisted his moustaches in it. How nice he is! I thought, etc., etc., until I had the bill. Same amount of wood, same size—115 francs, and it is to go up again this month. He declared also it is défendu to take the wood from the hillsides now. Coal—does not exist for private houses, only hotels. This is all rather a blow considering the climate, but we shall have to manage….

Oh, God, let us try to make this our last separation. At any rate it will be. I'd never bear another. They are too terrible.