I’ve been in the Thiergarten most of the afternoon, sitting in a green corner I found where there is some grass and daisies down by a pond and away from a path, and accordingly away from the Sunday crowds.  I watched the birds, and read the Winter’s Tale, and picked some daisies, and felt very happy.  The daisies are in a saucer before me at this moment.  Everything smelt so good,—­so warm, and sweet, and young, with the leaves on the oaks still little and delicate.  Life is an admirable arrangement, isn’t it, little mother.  It is so clever of it to have a June in every year and a morning in every day, let alone things like birds, and Shakespeare, and one’s work.  You’ve sometimes told me, when I was being particularly happy, that there were even greater happiness ahead for me,—­when I have a lover, you said; when I have a husband; when I have a child.  I suppose you know, my wise, beloved mother; but the delight of work, of doing the work well that one is best fitted for, will be very hard to beat.  It is an exultation, a rapture, that manifest progress to better and better results through one’s own effort.  After all, being obliged on Sundays to do nothing isn’t so bad, because then I have time to think, to step back a little and look at life.

See what a quiet afternoon sunning myself among daisies has done for me.  A week ago I was measuring the months to be got through before being with you again, in dismay.  Now I feel as if I were very happily climbing up a pleasant hill, just steep enough to make me glad I can climb well, and all the way is beautiful and safe, and on the top there is you.  To get to the top will be perfect joy, but the getting there is very wonderful too.  You’ll judge, from all this that I’ve had a happy week, that work is going well, and that I’m hopeful and confident.  I mustn’t be too confident, I know, but confidence is a great thing to work on.  I’ve never done anything good on days of dejection.

Goodnight, dear mother.  I feel so close to you tonight, just as if you were here in the room with me, and I had only to put out my finger and touch Love.  I don’t believe there’s much in this body business.  It is only spirit that matters really; and nothing can stop your spirit and mine being together.

  Your Chris.

Still, a body is a great comfort when it comes to wanting to kiss one’s darling mother.

  Berlin, Sunday, June 2lst, 1914.

My precious mother,

The weeks fly by, full of work and Weltpolitik.  They talk of nothing here at meals but this Weltpolitik.  I’ve just been having a dose of it at breakfast.  To say that the boarders are interested in it is to speak feebly:  they blaze with interest, they explode with it, they scorch and sizzle.  And they are so pugnacious!  Not to each other, for contrary to the attitude at Kloster’s they are knit together by the toughest band of uncritical and obedient admiration