The picture of you, wet and limp and helpless in my
arms, is always with me, stamped on the very substance of my brain, as is
the other picture of you in the drawing-room lined with book-cases, where
we found one another for the second time. Found one another in spirit, I
mean; an almost terribly greater finding than the first one, because it
can go on for ever as it belongs to the part of us which does not die.
That is my faith anyhow. To-morrow morning I will go ashore and into one
of those big, tawdry Genoa churches, and listen to the music, standing in
some quiet corner, and think about you and renew my vows to you. It won't
be half bad to keep Christmas that way.
"I don't pretend to be a great letter-writer, so if this one has
funny fashions to it you must forgive both them and me. I write as I
feel and must leave it so. The voyage has been good, and my poor old
tub has behaved herself, kept afloat and done her best, bravely if a
bit wheezingly, in some rather nasty seas. When we are through here I
take her across to Tripoli and back along the African coast to
Algiers, then across to Marseilles.
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