say whatever comes into my head to you.
It is as good as saying one's prayers. One never stops in those to
wonder whether one is shocking God, and that is what one loves God
for,--because we suppose he always understands, and therefore forgives;
and how much more--is this very wicked?--one loves one's mother who
understands, because, you see, there she is, and one can kiss her as
well. There's a great virtue in kissing, I think; an amazing comfort
in just _touching_ the person one loves. Goodnight, most blessed
little mother, and good-bye for a week. Your Chris.

Perhaps I might write a little note--not a letter, just a little
note,--on Wednesdays? What do you think? It would be nothing more,
really, than a postcard, except that it would be in an envelope.

_Berlin, Sunday, June 14th, 1914_.

Well, I didn't write on Wednesday, I resisted. (Good morning, darling
mother.) I knew quite well it wouldn't be a postcard, or anything even
remotely related to the postcard family. It would be a letter. A long
letter. And presently I'd be writing every day, and staying all soft;
living in the past, instead of getting on with my business, which is
the future. That is what I've got to do at this moment: not think too
much of you and home, but turn my face away from both those sweet,
desirable things so that I may get back to them quicker. It's true we
haven't got a home, if a home is a house and furniture; but home to
your Chris is where you are. Just simply anywhere and everywhere you
are. It's very convenient, isn't it, to have it so much concentrated
and so movable. Portable, I might say, seeing how little you are and
how big I am.

But you know, darling mother, it makes it easier for me to harden and
look ahead with my chin in the air rather than over my shoulder back at
you when I see, as I do see all day long, the extreme sentimentality of
the Germans. It is very surprising. They're the oddest mixture of
what really is a brutal hardness, the kind of hardness that springs
from real fundamental differences from ours in their attitude towards
life, and a squashiness that leaves one with one's mouth open. They
can't bear to let a single thing that has happened to them ever,
however many years ago, drop away into oblivion and die decently in its
own dust. They hold on to it, and dig it out that day year and that
day every year, for years apparently,--I expect for all their lives.
When they leave off