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… I have been through a little revolution since my last letter. I suddenly made up my mind (for it was sudden, at the last) to try and learn to live by what I believed in, no less, and not as in all my life up till now to live one way and think another … I don't mean superficially, of course, but in the deepest sense I've always been disunited. And this, which has been my ‘secret sorrow’ for years, has become everything to me just now. I really can't go on pretending to be one person and being another any more, Boge. It is a living death. So I have decided to make a clean sweep of all that was ‘superficial’ in my past life and start again to see if I can get into that real simple truthful full life I dream of. I have been through a horrible deadly time coming to this. You know the kind of time. It doesn't show much, outwardly, but one is simply chaos within!

… No treatment on earth is any good to me, really. It's all pretence. M. did make me heavier and a little stronger. But that was all if I really face the facts. The miracle never came near happening. It couldn't, Boge. And as for my spirit—well, as a result of that life at the Victoria Palace I stopped being a writer. I have only written long or short scraps since The Fly. If I had gone on with my old life I never would have written again, for I was dying of poverty of life.

I wish when one writes about things, one didn't dramatize them so. I feel awfully happy about all this, and it's all as simple as can be… In any case I shan't write any stories for three months, and I'll not have a book ready before the spring. It doesn't matter.