3 February 1922

Victoria Palace Hotel, Paris

My precious Bogey
   Your telegram came yesterday as a complete surprise - a very very marvellous one - a kind of miracle. I shall never forget it.l I read it, scrunched it up, then carefully unscrunched it and put it away "for keeps". It was a very wonderful thing to receive. I agree absolutely it is best that I start now & I telephoned the same moment to M. whose sole reply was "deux heures". (But before I speak of my time there I want to say your two letters my dear one are simply such perfect letters that one feeds on them. I don't know. You have become such a wonderful person - well, you always were - but the beams are so awfully plain now - on se chauffe at every word you write. And there is a kind of calmness which I feel, too. Indeed I feel we are both so changed since the days before Montana - different people. I do feel that I belong to you, that we live in our own world. This world simply passes by - it says nothing. I do not like it but thats no matter. It is not for long. Do you realise that IF the miracle happens we May Go to England This Summer Together? Thats just an idear of what the future holds. May it make you a hundredth part as happy as it makes me!)
   I went to the clinique today and there the French doctor with Manoukhine went over the battlefield. Really it was the first time I have ever been ‘examined'. They agreed absolutely after a very prolonged examination that I had no cavities. Absolument pas de cavernes. They tested & tested my lungs & always said the same. This means I am absolutely curable. My heart, rheumatism, everything was gone into and noted & finally I passed into another room & had a séance.
 [To John Middleton Murry, 3 February 1922.]

Dearest
   Your letter has come. Now I have worried you after all. Stop! All is over. I wired you yesterday that I had decided to stay. I should not have written then - I should have waited. For, as so often happens, after waiting I saw daylight. And I knew that whatever might happen I must take this chance. Now I have written to my agent about money. I shall manage it. Dont ever send me money, Brett! I mean that. Please don't. I am that kind of man!! I haven't yet heard from Murry but I wrote to him fully. You mustn't say that about thrashing him for it makes me sorry I told you. I understand Murry awfully well, its only I cant bear to make him unhappy or to make him feel he is having to make sacrifices.
   As soon as I decided about the treatment I phoned Manoukhin and had my first treatment today. And its only now this minute, in bed, with a warm spring like wind at the window that Im beginning to feel perhaps it may come true.
   But now all goes smoothly, dearest. Ill stay at this hotel which suits me in every way. The Mountain will go back to Montana and settle everything there. I expect Murry will join me here a bit later. All goes well - awfully well. Dont come for a few weeks. Wait until about the 5th week when I shall be able to walk a bit and laugh without coughing. Then come for a weekend. We'll be merry - really merry - two small crickets chirruping away - and there will be buds on the trees.
   So
   From now
   Don't lets talk any more about Tig for the present. She is done with - settled in Paris and so full of blue rays at this moment that she feels like a deep sea fishchik. [To Dorothy Brett, 3 February 1922.]