Poor little circle of three loving persons, please be tremendously brave. Don't let anything turn you into cowards--we've all got to be worthy of each other's sacrifice; the greater the sacrifice may prove to be for the one the greater the nobility demanded of the remainder. How idle the words sound, and yet they will take deep meanings when time has given them graver sanctions. I think gallant is the word I've been trying to find--we must be gallant English women and gentlemen....
How far away the childish past seems--almost as though it never happened. And was I really the budding novelist in New York? Life has become so stern and scarlet--and so brave. From my window I look out on the English Channel, a cold, grey-green sea, with rain driving across it and a fleet of small craft taking shelter. Over there beyond the curtain of mist lies France--and everything that awaits me.
News has just come that I have to start. Will continue from France.
Here I am in France with the same strange smells and street cries, and almost the same little boys bowling hoops over the very cobbly cobble stones. I had afternoon tea at a patisserie and ate a great many gâteaux for the sake of old times. We had a very choppy crossing, and you would most certainly have been sick had you been on board. It seemed to me that I must be coming on one of those romantic holidays to see churches and dead history--only the khaki-clad figures reminded me that I was coming to see history in the making. It's a funny world that batters us about so. It's three years since I was in France--the last time was with Arthur in Provence. It's five years since you and I did our famous trip together.
I wish you were here--there are heaps of English nurses in the streets. I expect to sleep in this place and proceed to my destination to-morrow. How I wish I could send you a really descriptive letter! If I did, I fear you would not get it--so I have to write in generalities. None of this seems real--it's a kind of wild pretence from which I shall awake--and when I tell you my dream you'll laugh and say, "How absurd of you, dreaming that you were a soldier. I must say you look like it."
Good-bye, my dearest girl, God bless you, CON.