This place and this large cool upper floor of the Barbaro, with all the space practically to myself, and draughts and scirocco airs playing over me indecently undressed, is more than ever delicious and unique.... The breath of the lagoon still plays up, but I mingle too much of another fluid with my ink, and I have no more clothes to take off.... I greet affectionately, yes affectionately, kind Henry, and the exquisite gold-haired maiden, and I am, dear Laura Wagnière, your very faithful old friend,
/# The Vicomte Robert d'Humières, poet and essayist, fell in action in France, April 26, 1915. #/
The d'Humières have just been lunching with me, and that has so reknotted the silver cord that stretched so tense from the first days of last March to the first of those of May--wasn't it?--that I feel it a folly in addition to a shame not yet to have written to you (as I have been daily and hourly yearning to do) ever since my return from Italy about a month ago. You flung me the handkerchief, Edith, just at that time--literally cast it at my feet: it met me, exactly, bounding--rebounding--from my hall-table as I recrossed my threshold after my long absence; which fact makes this tardy response, I am well aware, all the more graceless. And then came the charming little picture-card of the poor Lamb House hack grinding out his patient prose under your light lash and dear Walter B.'s--which should have accelerated my production to the point of its breaking in waves at your feet: and yet it's only to-night that my overburdened spirit--pushing its way, ever since my return, through the accumulations and arrears, in every sort, of absence--puts pen to paper for your especial benefit--if benefit it be. The charming d'Humières both, as I say, touring--_training_--in England, through horrid wind and weather, with a _bonne grace_ and a wit and a Parisianism worthy of a better cause, amiably lunched with me a couple of days since on their way from town to Folkestone, and so back to Plassac (don't you _like_ "Plassac," down in our dear old Gascony?) the seat of M. de Dampierre--to whom, à ce qu'il paraît, that day at luncheon we were all exquisitely sympathetic! Well, it threw back the bridge across the gulfs and the months, even to the very spot where the great nobly-clanging glass door used to open to the arrested, the engulfing and disgorging car--for we sat in my little garden here and talked about you galore and kind of made plans (wild vain dreams, though I didn't let _them_ see it!) for our all somehow being together again.... But oh, I should like to remount the stream of time much further back than their passage here--if it weren't (as it somehow always is when I get at urgent letters) ever so much past midnight. It was only with my final return hither that my deep draught of riotous living came to an end, and as the cup had originally been held to my lips all by your hands I somehow felt in presence of your interest and sympathy up to the very last, and as if you absolutely should have been _avertie_ from day to day--I did the matter that justice at least. Too much of the story has by this time dropped out; but there are bits I wish I could save for you.... But I must break off--it's 1.15 a.m.!