excited, exhausted, bewildered. For three nights sleep failed me. Nothing is so wonderful as a perfect friendship between a man of your age and a woman of mine. Why did you change your mind, or your note, so quickly yesterday? I knew all the time what was happening to us. I think there is something arrogant in your humility. I am naturally so much more outspoken than you, although my troubles have made me more fearful. You are a strange man. I think you may send me a portrait. When I try to recall you, you don't always come whole, only bits of you, inconsistent bits, a gleam of humour in your eyes, your stoop, the height that makes us so incongruous together. I like you, Gabriel Stanton, and I've run away from you; that's the truth. That disingenuous aggressive humility of yours is a subtle appeal to my sympathies. I don't want to sympathise with you overmuch, with the loneliness of your life, or anything about you. We were meeting too often, talking too freely. I curl up and want to hide when I think of some of the things we have said (I have said!!!). I know I am too impulsive.
I'm going to settle down here and start seriously on my Staffordshire Potters. I've taken the house for three months. If I had not already written the longest letter ever penned I'd describe it to you. Perhaps I'll write again if you encourage me. Think of me as a novelist out of work, using up my MS. paper. Down here everything has become unreal. You and I, but especially "us"! I want everything to be unreal, I'm not strong enough for more reality. Keep unsubstantial. I don't suppose you will understand me (I am not sure that I under-
