21 November 1921 – 27 November 1921

Since then I have only written The Doll's House. A bad spell has been on me. I have begun two stories,1 but then I told them and they felt betrayed. It is absolutely fatal to give way to this temptation. . . . To-day I began to write, seriously, The Weak Heart, — a story which fascinates me deeply. What I feel it needs so peculiarly is a very subtle variation of ' tense ' from the present to the past and back again — and softness, lightness, and the feeling that all is in bud, with a play of humour over the character of Ronnie. And the feeling of the Thorndon Baths, the wet, moist, oozy . . . no, I know how it must be done. May I be found worthy to do it! Lord, make me crystal clear for thy light to shine through !

These last days I have been awfully rebellious. Longing for something. I feel uprooted. I want things that J. can so easily do without, that aren't natural to him. I long for them. But then, stronger than all these desires, is the other, which is to make good before I do anything else. The sooner the books are written, the sooner I shall be well, the sooner my wishes will be in sight of fulfilment. That is sober truth, of course. As a pure matter of fact I consider this enforced confinement here as God-given. But, on the other hand, I must make the most of it quickly. It is not unlimited any more than anything else is. Oh, why — oh, why isn't anything unlimited? Why am I troubled every single day of my life by the nearness of death and its inevitability? I am really diseased on that point. And I can't speak of it. If I tell J. it makes him unhappy. If I don't tell him, it leaves me to fight it. I am tired of the battle. No one knows how tired. To-night, when the evening-star shone through the side-window and the mountains were so lovely, I sat there thinking of death. Of all there was to do — of Life, which is so lovely — and of the fact that my body is a prison. But this state of mind is evil. It is only by acknowledging that I, being what I am, had to suffer this in order to do the work I am here to perform. It is only by acknowledging it, by being thankful that work was not taken away from me, that I shall re- cover. I am weak where I must be strong. And to-day — Saturday — less than ever. But no matter. I have progressed ... a little. I have realised what it is to be done — the strange barrier to be crossed from thinking it to writing it. . . . Daphne.