Am I eighteen or twenty-eight? You’ve a reputation for knowing more about Greek roots than any other Englishman. Should I have run away down here if you had talked about Greek roots? I’m 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 understand myself). But you begged me to “let myself go,” “pour myself out on you.” Can I take your strength and lean upon it, the tenderness you promise me and revel in it, all that I believe you are offering me, and give you nothing? I am mean, afraid of giving. It all came so quickly, so unexpectedly. I have never had a real companion. Never, never, never even as a child been wholly natural with anybody, posing always. The only daughter of a millionaire with more talent than she ought to have, a shy soul behind a brazen forehead, is in a difficult position. To undrape that shy soul of mine as you so nearly make me do, unwillingly—but it might happen—makes me shiver. That’s why I ran away, I want to be isolated, to stand alone. Here is the truth again, not at the bottom of a well, but at the end of an interminable letter. I am afraid of pain, and this intimacy presages it. You cannot be all I think you. I don’t want to be near enough to see your clay feet. I am going to get some picture postcards with small space for writing; this MS. paper demoralises me.