And now I am in this strange library whose rows of books stare so unfamiliarly at me. The table at which I write is by the big French windows, and I must be careful to keep my elbows from sprawling as they would, for everything is covered with dust, and if I were fussy and wiped it away I should raise a great cloud of it around my head.... All is quiet and leisurely this morning. Outside there is no sun or mildness to make me restless and self-conscious about my laziness; it is one of those days on which one need not think of doing anything which will be "good for one," and until about tea-time the outside world will be better to look at than to breathe. For the windows show me a very dark, wet-laden garden, and the steady rain falling among the last leaves of the trees and their myriad dead comrades on the grass and gravel makes that "swish" which comes so coolly and pleasantly to ears which need not be wet with it. But at about five o'clock, if the rain has stopped by then, I shall go out and walk about the garden for an hour or so; I shall walk to the top of the Divvil Mound, which lies above half the county to the west and, on a fine day, gives your eyes a rugged length of the distant Cheviots, and there I shall look up to the sky and draw in long draughts of the fresh rain-scented air, and feel that I shall never be ill again in all my life; and as I walk back under the trees the wet will drip on to me and I shall splash myself here and there; but I shall not swear, for my clothes are done for the day, and when I get in I shall have a bath and change, and feel all new and clean for whatever the evening may bring. Beside me now is an envelope with an American stamp, and the vaguely woebegone look which readdressed envelopes have; for it followed me here some ten days ago from London, reaching me the same morning that I sat down to write this (for it has taken me more than a week of long mornings to write these few thousand words) which was at first to have been an essay on London, but seems now to have fallen into the state of a personal confession. Many times I have taken out this letter and re-read it, for it is a strange letter, such a one as a man may receive only once in his life. This letter needs no answer, for it is dead like the person who sent it; and that the sender should not now care if I read it or not gives me a queer feeling of triviality; for in her letter she asks me to write back, not knowing then that a letter from a dead person is the only sort one need not answer without blame or reproach.