page 80

I had a last glimpse of you just before it all disappeared and I waved; I hope you saw.

Thank you for letting me see Asheham. It is very wonderful and I feel that it will flash upon one corner of my inward eye for ever.

It was good to have time to talk to you; we have got the same job, Virginia, and it is really very curious and thrilling that we should both, quite apart from each other, be after so very nearly the same thing. We are, you know; there's no denying it.

Don't let Them ever persuade you that I spend any of my precious time swopping hats or committing adultery. I'm far too arrogant and proud. However, let them think what they like…. There's a most wonderful greengage light on the tree outside and little white clouds bobbing over the sky like rabbits. And I wish you could see some superb gladioli standing up in my studio very proud and defiant like Indian braves.

Yes, your Flower Bed is very good. ¹ There's a still, quivering, changing light over it all and a sense of those couples dissolving in the bright air which fascinates me—

Old Mother Gooseberry, my char from Ludgate Hill, has hung up her beetle bonnet: “Please m'm, if you would let me have the place to myself.” So I am chased off, to sit among those marble pillars of brawn at the Library and read, not Henry James.