7 April
7 April
7 April 1920
Dear Mr and Mrs Schiff
I feel that I deceived you today about my health and I succumbed to the awfully great temptation of deceiving myself. Really and truly, thinking it over, I am afraid I am not well enough to live in that darling little flat. You see, there are days when Im completely hors de combat; I can't walk a step further than I walked today and I have to take horrid and extravagant care of myself always. Sometimes I get a week when I can't move and Im always under a doctor's care & if I do go out Im supposed not to breathe the dust. This sounds ridiculous; I wish I didn't have to say it. I feel there is plenty of room to be well in une petite appartement but there is not enough room to be ill and I have to provide for it. When I said I had to write for pennies I didn't mean for the essential pennies but for all the luxuries which are alas! my necessities. Yes, forgive me, I was carried away today & I forgot I must behave like an invalid. But when I came in and lay down and rested I thought: "You know these things aren't for you, and you were deceiving those two dear people. You must let them know at once."
Will you forgive me? And thank you for a lovely day. Im lying here living it over and seeing in my mind's eye your garden and house & hearing the torrent - and - much more important than those things -delighting in the fact of having met you.
Yours ever sincerely
K.M. [To Sydney and Violet Schiff in Collected Letters]