Dear John,

I have just sent you a wire about opera. In case you wire you can come opera, I will enclose your ticket and you might as well go direct to your seat. No worry about clothes, come anyhow.

I am hoping you can will like Bryher. I am writing you in strict confidence about her. You must not speak to Fletcher or anyone. But she is going everyday to a specialist and there is possibility of insanity. The doctor tells me that her sanity for the present depends on me. This sounds exaggeration but you are used to the exaggerations of life. She likes you but remember she is horribly sensitive and covers it. She is devoted to me. I can do nothing, am only hoping, if I have the strength, to open her mind to possibilities. She is shut in and blinded to life and I have never, never met so tragic a life-personality.

I have again and again told her that I can not stand the strain of living with her and yet I can not leave her. She helps me in many ways but I want freedom and if the tie becomes too much, I must leave her. Yet I know my influence may help her, and may help many, many others later. But I am not a philanthropist. I must have my freedom first and if the strain becomes too great, I shall just chuck her and the maddening problem of her life. There may be a doom over her and I may be only hurting myself trying to help her. On the other hand, she may be made for happiness, her own and other peoples and I may be her means of escape, her one means, and it would be base of me not to help her. I am fond of the girl, but I am not strong and if this thing is not soon helped, this madness of hers, a real suicidal madness, I can not stay with her. She is better than she was, but I am certain I can not stand it if the doctors do not help her soon.

Do not let her know I write you so personally. But she likes you and your book. She wants to know about Russia. She may be able to help in many ways, but she can never help you as much as you may be able to help her.

I must see you one day and have a good talk. I really must. You and I are not people, we are forces of some sort.

I like your book, John, more than ever. The last chapters are magnificent. You have real greatness and you must go on writing if not for yourself, for many, many others.

you will burn this letter ad you know it
is confidential. The worst thing is, the
girl is in love with me, so madly that it is
terrible. No man has ever cared for me like
that. She seems possessed at times with a
daemon or spirit outside herself. One side of
her is so childlike that I am moved and must be
tender, then this other thing comes. It is
awful, like something from without, a possession.

I understand those people Christ touched,
those men and women and children too, possessed
with devils. It is so definite with her,
something from outside. But I don't Christ. I
have not the strength nor the love to banish this
thing.

Dear John, I know you will read sincerity
into this. There is no one else I could write
to like this. But on re-reading your book, I
gain new confidence.

I have been like a figure in those plays
you write of. I have been all alone - can
you understand - facing all those problems
that South Audley Street stands for, quite
alone yet not willing to be flung into that
malestrom of capital and social evils. Do you
think I wanted to face all those things? I
have been quite alone, moving without my own will,
moving, tired to death, like a shell from
which the spirit has departed, but moved like
a piece in a play, pushed forward.

Do you think anyone would help me? That
was the funny thing. No one would really. They
were all afraid. I had to take the thing into
my hands and the doctors said she would certainly
go mad if she stayed another year in that house.

Perhaps I have played my part in this
play and it is your clue to enter.

Well, anyhow, dear John, you will at
least be patient with me. And if you can help
you will. You will because you will not be
able to do other than you are meant to do, and
if you are meant to help, you will.

You and I are like people in a play. I
don't think I suffer any more. I doubt if you
do. Some day I must tell you of my life.
But not my life at present, this poor girl's life
is what concerns me.