… It has got very cold here. I feel it. I am adjusting myself to it and it makes me feel rather dull—distrait, you know. I have had to leave my dear little grenier au 6ème for something less lofty, more expensive, but warmer. However, it's a very nice room. “Et vous avez un beau pendule,” as the garcon said. He thoroughly approves of the change. All the same, you say ‘Tell me about yourself.’ I'll have a try. Here goes.

A new way of being is not an easy thing to live. Thinking about it, preparing to meet the difficulties and so on, page 254 is one thing, meeting those difficulties another. I have to die to so much; I have to make such big changes. I feel the only thing to do is to get the dying over—to court it, almost. (Fearfully hard, that.) And then all hands to the business of being born again. What do I mean exactly? Let me give you an instance. Looking back, my boat is almost swamped sometimes by seas of sentiment. “Ah, what I have missed! How sweet it was, how dear, how warm, how simple, how precious!” And I think of the garden at the Isola Bella and the furry bees and the house-wall so warm. But then I remember what we really felt there—the blanks, the silences, the anguish of continual misunderstanding. Were we positive, eager, real, alive? No, we were not. We were a nothingness shot with gleams of what might be. But no more. Well, I have to face everything as far as I can and see where I stand—what remains.

For with all my soul I do long for a real life, for truth, and for real strength. It's simply incredible, watching K. M., to see how little causes a panic. She's a perfect corker at toppling over…