KATHERINE MANSFIELD

As usual, I find with Katherine what I don’t find with the other clever women a sense of ease & interest, which is, I suppose, due to her caring so genuinely if so differently from the way I care, about our precious art.

A great poem makes us experience a moment, and a great short story makes us experience an epiphany, and a great novel makes us experience an entire other life.

I told you to be free - because I meant it. What happens in your personal life does NOT affect me. I have of you what I want - a relationship which is unique but it is not what the world understands by marriage. That is to say I do not in any way depend on you, neither can you shake me.

Nobody can. I do not know how it is but I live withdrawn from my personal life. (This is hard to say.) I am a writer first. In the past, it is true, when I worked less, my writing self was merged in my personal self I felt conscious of you - to the exclusion of almost everything, at times. (All this is just outline.)

But now I do not. You are dearer than anyone in the world to me - but more than anything else - more even than talking or laughing or being happy I want to write.