4 May 1920
I try in vain to drive this tyrannous, all-absorbing love from my heart, but it returns undaunted, imperishable, to rage and storm through me like the wind through a roofless house.
22 July 1918
For 16 nights I have listened expectantly for the opening of my door, for the whispered ‘Lushka’ as you entered my room, and tonight I am alone. What shall I do? How can I sleep?
11 September 1910
If you are very good and we are not all drowned in the Red Sea, devoured by mosquitoes or carried off by monkeys I will bring you back some sapphires, pearls and rubies to have made into something for your outward adornment.
1918
How you would adore this place!
The gardens are one mass of blue hydrangeas, and fuschias grow abundantly wild, as in Ireland. There are superimposed ‘layers’ of coastline, like the drop scene of a theatre . . . all wasted because you are not here to see it
5 May 1919
The more I think of marriage, the further removed from it I feel! It is an institution that ought to be confined to temperamental old maids, weary prostitutes, and royalties!
March 1919
Sometimes I am flooded by an agony of physical longing for you . . . a craving for your nearness and your touch. At other times I feel I should be quite content if I could only hear the sound of your voice.
21 October 1918
All the frills and furbelows, conceits and coquetries have vanished utterly, leaving my love gloriously and brutally naked, to take or leave – as you will.
8 October 1910
I am in the act of asking myself if I ought to reply to your question? A question furthermore most indiscreet and which merits a sharp reprimand. Reply, don’t reply, reply! Oh to the devil with discretion!
July 1919
I went to a horrible dance, and (thought I say it and shouldn't) I was what I consider quite the best-looking and the best-dressed person there –