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The Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume II

September 19, 1922

page 244

To Sylvia Lynd

It's the most miserable news to know you are in bed again and that again such bad sorrowful things have been happening to you… What can one say? I had so hoped and believed that your lean years were over. May they be over now!

I'd love to come and see you. But stairs are unclimbable by me. I am better, but I can't walk more than a few yards. I can walk about a house and give a very good imitation of a perfectly well and strong person in a restaurant or from the door across the pavement to the taxi. But that's all. My heart still won't recover. I think I shall be in England two to three months, as there is a man here who can give me the X-ray treatment I've been having in Paris. After that I shall go to Italy. But all is vague. I'm seeing the specialist to-day. I may have to go back to Paris almost immediately. What it is to be in doctors' hands!

If I stay, I do hope we shall be able to meet later on, perhaps. Let us arrange some easy place for both of us then. It would be most awfully nice to have a talk. I'm living in two crooked little rooms here in a little crooked house. It's a relief to be away from hotels after five months in Paris in a hotel bedroom overlooking a brick wall.

I'll never be able to knock any spots off this city, my dear. It frightens me. When I'm with people I feel rather like an unfortunate without a racquet standing on the tennis court while a smashing game is being played by the other three—it's a rather awful and rather silly feeling.

Don't forget how much I'd love to see you. Or how sorry I am for everything.