We—I—miss you, lovely little neighbour. I think of you often. Especially in the evenings, when I am on the balcony and it's too dark to write or to do anything but wait for the stars. A time I love. One feels half disembodied, sitting like a shadow at the door of one's being while the dark tide rises. Then comes the moon, marvellously serene, and small stars, very merry for some reason of their own. It is so easy to forget. In a worldly life, to attend to these miracles. But no matter. They are there waiting, when one returns. Dawn is another. The incomparable beauty of every early morning, before human beings are awake! But it all comes back to the same thing, Elizabeth—there's no escaping the glory of Life. Let us engage to live for ever. For ever is not half long enough for me.

London feels far away from here. We thrill, we are round-eyed at the slightest piece of news. You cannot imagine how your letter was taken in—absorbed. I see you stepping into carriages, driving to the play, dining among mirrors and branched candlesticks and faraway sweet sounds. Disguised in ‘Kepanapron,’ I open your door to illustrious strangers, Mighty Ones, who take off page 145 their coats in the large hall and are conducted into your special room where the books are… Do not forget us.

J. has been so deep in Flaubert this week that his voice has only sounded from under the water, as it were. He has emerged at tea-time and together we have examined the … very large, solid pearls … I must say I do like a man to my tea.

And here are your petunias, lovely as ever, reminding me always of your garden and the grass with those flat dark rosettes where the daisy plants had been.

But this isn't a letter. Farewell. May Good Fortune fall ever more deeply in love with thee.