Adis Ababa.
26 April –

They came by last mail your letter and your diary – Today is a great feast to which I should have gone, but I sent my wife & Capt. Sandford my No. 2, pleading despatches & business for this afternoon’s post – and indeed they are thick upon me today – But what I did, me alone, was to re-read your letter – my dear my dear – something of that silence of meeting of which you speak, comes over me – I don’t want to talk or write – but I wasn’t to be with you - you and I all alone for a little – in the locked garden with the high wall where I live and you too now – That is where I have loved my mistress that you hated & have forgiven – solitude – and great and dear she will always be, for you too are now a worshipper – for now we walk in her garden –

There is no time – I must write about the war in the north & the Italians – Come out of the garden – we have flung a rosebud to the goddess and blessed her - & now we will write despatches –

But first I will answer some things – I will kiss you dear & love you and tell you that are right – that what say sounds loud in me and lasts - & so it shall be – Because you love me I bless you and thank you – I take it as a gift from the gods to keep –

You wanted to know about fidelity of the mind – no, the body – my dear my dear I will try to tell you – it is simple – there is only one love, as you say, one passion fit for the locked garden which is that of mind & body – altogether, everything, given as you give or as I could give with all the might of dreams – But do I live in the garden? I have to leave it and face the crowd & the dust of everyday – I must put plainer than that – I like it not & yet it is better – What was is my mind as I wrote to you those things, what is in my mind now, is to say to you that I have a wife – did you think I meant other women? – She is not of the garden – but she has her place in the world & her right in it, & she is my wife – It is a hard thing to say – and yet it is time – fidelity of the body is as nothing – and yet I would have it, for you know you know, - whoever loved that does not know – that mind & body sing together to be happy – But I know that as sharply as I do – no you cannot know that – I do not want you ever to know it –

One cheats oneself – I say it is does not matter and in a way it is time – yes, in a way –

Yes – the garden for us – the inviolable garden where none can come – only solitude to smile at us – but we cannot live in it, neither of us – but we know it is there.

There is much – so much to say to you – but I can’t say it now – I shall keep your letter here – when I think, that it may be stolen from the garden, I shall send it to join the book in London – It is like the book – the very heart of love - & I love it even better – I keep pulling myself up, saying to myself stop - & work – but there was something else – you said might you write sometimes something for me alone – why yes – my dear heart can I say no to such a thing as that – I am hungry for it – the wonder & glory of your words – words of magic – what did you say? like wine they sould be and honey and fire – and in the end like swords, bright & shining – but I won’t not now – But my queen of swords, a sword I have loved and the sound of a tempest – oh yes – and wine and honey and fire – they warm me – and sing to me.

I’ll write to you – I haven’t said anything yet – You’ll be by now in London or nearly –

I ought to be in England next winter or spring at latest – there is no particular danger here that I can see –

Come now and we will throw another rose to solitude
Dick.