Theberton Hall,
Leiston,
Suffolk Dec. 28th

My dear – There came this morning your book – and a letter – The book I have read all day – its perfectly wonderful and I love it – and you – I can’t write about it yet – and it would take the book of my soul, never written, to answer it – I kiss your hands & your feet, dear woman of my heart – Let it be for a moment – in many thoughts & many hours, perhaps in many lives I’ll answer it –

But I am now full of anxiety – Fattuch’s illness leaves you without any man of your confidence, with dire Arabia before you. If I was nervous before, I am doubly so now – I wish I was with you – your letter is Dec. 12th & 15th - & you were gone on the 16th – twelve days ago – where are you? How are you faring? Has Fattuch mended yet enough to leave to join you? I think I will wire to Devey to find out. Typhoid is very light as a rule in those countries, but Fattuch is a big & not very young man – Still he might have passed now over the crisis – and if not very weakened be en route to Muaddam – or so I hope. My dear, my dear, I shan’t be at rest till I hear from you & of you – I didn’t go & see your mother – I hadn’t a moment – my father has been ill – I came down - & I shall go up in a few days I suppose –
I see your heart is towards Hayil. I wrote to my uncle – and he thanks you = and wishes you a safe journey. It troubled me before but it is now worse – The uncle said by the way that the Beni Sakki were at enmity in his day with his friends.

You said write up to the 15th Jan to Damascus - & then Baghdad – It will be horrible if I have to leave Baghdad with no news –

And the desert has you – you and your splendid courage my queen of the desert – and my heart with you – I’ve your book – tonight I shall read it again – It makes me humble, darling, such a perfect love as that – something that one has dreamt of as one dreams of dim glories all a-wonder – I am not worthy such a gift – If I was young & free and a very perfect knight, it would be more fitting to take and kiss you – But I am old & tied and full of a hundred faults – Ah my dear my dear what things you say – they hold the heart - & to my soul you answer – as for my Leskovik letter & its questioning, you are right – not that way for you and me – because we are slaves not because it is not the right, the natural way – when the passions of the body flame and melt into the passions of the spirit – in those dreams ecstasies so rarely found by any human creatures, those as you say whom God has really joined – in some divine moment we might reach it – the ecstasy – We never shall – But there is left so much – As you say my dear wise Queen – all that there is we shall take –

I cannot tell you how it moves me to hear you say – not that – to see it written by you, that you might have married me, have borne my children, have been my life as well as my heart. Touching at all points – you yourself & me myself – each free each independent, each content to be one – Yes – I’ve dreamed those things –

Philosophy is a cold mistress – “old barren reason” – But still I take her because I must. We will have all we can – It shall be much – For years, perhaps, really always, I have lived in the kingdom of my mind – I take refuge in God – I love you, but I shall never have you, - only always in the real world be your lover, you humble servant, your loyal friend –

No – I can’t burn that book – I shall, when I cannot feel some of sure of secrecy, seal it up as you do – It shall be in my bank or in my safe – alone, it shall come out & talk to me – I burnt the letters, because I thought I ought to – how I am sorry – Even if, as you say and I kiss you for it, it doesn’t matter for cannot you write me thousands of others – still they were they, you to me - & I burnt them – poor martyrs in the fire –

You give me a new world Gertrude – I have often loved women as a man like me does love them – well and badly, little & much, as the blood took me, or the time or the inclination, or simply for the adventure – to see what happened – But that is all now behind me –

You give the key of your heart, - whatever I did or wanted or thought you would be my mate my equal - & so to you also I would like to live – For though I have friends I suppose, and some of them women, even a wife, that are as far removed from our garden where we walk as east from west – there is a flaming sword in front of every man’s heart guarding the tree of life and from behind it I have often looked out on the world and felt alone – and turned to dreams & philosophy and the worship of a quiet death.

And you shall walk in my garden, even ghostwise and imperfect in this life – and I will walk in yours, ghostwise also & still more imperfectly –

And I will try to be more like what your lover might be – and ghostwise – but it will be sometimes hard, because I am an ordinary sensual man – and follower of delights – But it will save me from it, because I know so well by some heart likeness that that way might lie misery for you – by the very splendour of the generosity that would give, is the taker judged – And there will remain the garden to walk in –

And we will be greater than any of these things –

And your life – I love reading in your book of it – as if I read your heart – what you did early, & how you thought – And you shall tell me more of all these things – And perhaps I’ll try to tell – principally because you say you’d like it, bless you - & also because I’ve never told anybody, being reserved - & having never opened that door – But I promise it won’t interest you much - & also I’ve forgotten –

For the past is past – let the dead bury the dead - & one might stumble on sharp bones – But I am not afraid – I love you to want to know – and I’d tell you anything –

I’ll send this – it might catch you – I’ve not done not by a long way – but it will give you my love, my wishes for the new year, and my hopes & anxieties for your safety – Bless you –
Dick.