a fault.  You are terrifyingly clever; my intelligence is of the feeblest.  You have a refined sense of humour; the poorest, most obvious joke is good enough for me.  But this is only talk.  I don’t know that I am “in love,”—­I don’t like the expression anyway,—­but this I know, that if you were not in the world it would be an unpeopled waste to me.  The place you happen to be in is where all interest centres.  Every minute of the time as I go through my days, laughing, talking, enjoying myself vastly, away at the back of my mind the thought of you lies “hidden yet bright,” making for me a new heaven and a new earth.  Is this caring?  Is this what you want to hear me say?  I can’t write what I would like, I can’t weave pretty things, I can only speak straight on, but oh, my dear, I am so glad that in this big, confusing world we have found each other.  Poor Rocking Horse Fly! poor fat friend! how dull for them, how dull for all the rest of the people in the world not to have a you!

I am not going to write any more, not because I haven’t lots to say, but because writing much or talking much about a thing—­being queer and Scots, it is hard for me to say love—­seems somehow to cheapen it, profane it.

I have opened this just to say again, My dear, my dear!

Calcutta, April 21.

... only three more days in India, and I don’t know whether I am horribly sorry to go or profoundly relieved to get away.  There is no doubt it is a sudden and dangerous country.  Three people we knew have died suddenly of cholera, and two others have had bombs thrown at them.  I shall be thankful to find myself safely on board the steamer, but even if I escape I am leaving Boggley in the midst of these perils.  Not that he lets the thought of them vex his soul.  You learn, he says, to look upon death in a different way in India, but I am sure I never could learn to regard with equanimity the thought of being quite well one day and being hurried away to the Circular Road Cemetery early the next.  It is sad to die in a foreign land, and it is somehow specially sad, at least I think so, for a home-loving Scot to lie away from home.

  “Tell me not the good and wise
  Care not where their dust reposes. 
  That to him who sleeping lies
  Desert rocks shall seem as roses. 
  I’ve been happy above ground,
  I could ne’er be happy under,
  Out of Teviot’s gentle sound. 
  Part us, then, not far asunder.”

Yesterday I saw a pathetic sight.  A couple in a tikka-gharry; the man a soldier, a Gordon Highlander, and on the front seat a tiny coffin.  The man’s arm was round the woman’s shoulder, and she was crying bitterly.  A bit of shabby crape was tied round her hat, and she carried a sad little wreath.