meals and lives, birth and death, when, trying to escape down one of the lanes, they rise so high above one’s head that it’s like being drowned in a green bath, I tell you the feather-bed is not so far away—suffocation seems no idle dream. The fact of the matter is that there’s nothing here for me to do. It didn’t matter having nothing to do in Russia—although, as a matter of fact, I always had plenty, because no one else had anything to do that couldn’t be stopped at any moment for the sake of a friend, or a drink, or a bit of vague thinking. I suppose it’s the order, the neatness, the punctuality and, at the same time, the solid, matter-of-fact assumption that things must be exactly what they look (which they never are) that fusses me. But really of course I came down here to make love to Katherine—and I only get a bit of her. She cherishes the faith that I want the family as badly as I want her, and that the family want me as badly as she does. She has got a thousand little duties here that I had never reckoned on, and they are like midges on a summer’s evening. I would throw myself into their life if they would let me, but there doesn’t seem any real place for me. It’s fighting with shadows. George Trenchard takes me for drives, Millie, Katherine’s sister, takes me for walks—Katie herself is, I do believe, with me whenever she can be.... I ought to be satisfied. But only last night Great Aunt Sarah, who is in her dotage (or pretends to be), said, in the drawing-room to Millie, in a loud whisper, ‘Who is that young man, my dear, sitting over there? I seem to know his face.’ That sort of thing doesn’t exactly make you feel at home. With all this, I feel the whole time that they are criticising me and waiting for me to make some big blunder. Then they’ll say to Katherine, ‘You see, my dear!’ Oh, of course, I’m an ass to make a fuss. Any sensible fellow would just wait his year, marry Katherine and say good-bye to the lot. But I shan’t be able to say good-bye to the lot. That’s the whole business ... partly because I’m weak, partly because Katherine adores them, partly because that is, I believe, Mrs. T.’s plan. To absorb me, to swallow me, to have me ever afterwards, somewhere about the place, a colourless imitation of the rest of them. So they’ll keep Katie, and I’m not important enough to matter. That’s her plan. Is she stronger than I? Perhaps after all I shall snatch Katherine from them and escape with her—and then have her homesick for ever after.... Why am I always imagining something that isn’t here? Russia poisoned my blood—sweet poison, but poison all the same. You’ll understand this letter, but if George Trenchard, or indeed any ordinary sensible Englishman were to read it, what an ass he’d think me! ‘If he thought more about the girl he was going to marry than about himself he wouldn’t have all this worry.’ But isn’t it just that. If, in nine months from now, I, swallowed whole by Mrs. T., marry Katie, will