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12 October 1922

Select Hotel, Place de la Sorbonne, Paris

Its a divinely beautiful day - so was yesterday. I hope you are having the same weather at Selsfield. The sky is as blue as the sky can be. I shall go to the Luxembourg Gardens this afternoon and count dahlia and baby heads. The Paris gardens are simply a glorious sight with flowers - masses of beloved japonica, enough japonica at last. I shall have a garden one day and work in it, too. Plant, weed, tie up, throw over the wall. And the peony border really will be staggering. Oh, how I love flowers! I think of them with such longing. I go through them, one after another, remembering them from their first moments with love - oh with rapture as if they were babies! No its what other women feel for babies - perhaps. Oh Earth! Lovely unforgettable Earth. Yesterday I saw the leaves falling, so gently, so softly, raining down from little slender trees golden against the blue. Perhaps Autumn is loveliest. Lo! it is autumn. What is the magic of that? It is magic to me.
At that very minute in came your letter with the rose - and the aspen tree, the two little birds the ring from the anvil and the far away rooster. You never gave me such a perfect birthday present before. A divine one. I love you for it.  [To J. M. Murry, 13 October 1922.]