now just how
anything takes you because you have at your command an alluring
immobility, a sort of sudden static receptiveness which is, to an
Englishman, a Westerner that is, at once familiar and enigmatic. And
when one has informed you, distinctly if ungrammatically, in three
languages, that one is going away for good, and you assume for a moment
that aforementioned immobility, and murmur "_C'est la guerre_," I ask
you, what is one to think?

And perhaps you will recall that you then went on brushing your hair
precisely as though I had made some banal remark about the weather. A
detached observer would say--"This woman has no heart. She is too stupid
to understand." However, as I am something more than a detached
observer, I know that in spite of that gruff, laconic attitude of yours,
that enigmatic immobility, you realize what this means to us, to me, to
you.

So, while you are down in the garden, and the light is still quite good
by this western window, I am writing this for you. As we say over in
America, "Let me tell you something." I have written a book, and I am
dedicating it to you. As you are aware, I have written books before.
When I explained this to you you were stricken with that sudden
silence, that attentive seriousness, if you remember, and regarded me
for a long time without making any remark. Well, another one is done and
I inscribe it to you. Of course I know perfectly well that books are
nothing to you, that you read only the perplexing and defaced human
hieroglyphics around you. I know that when you receive a copy of this
new affair, through the British Post Office in the _Rue Franque_, you
will not read it. You will lay it carefully in a drawer, and let it go
at that. And knowing this, and without feeling sad about it, either,
since I have no fancy for bookish women, I am anxious that you should
read at least the dedication. So I am writing it here by the window,
hurriedly, in words you will understand, and I shall leave it on the
table, and you will find it later, when I am gone.

Listen.

The fact is, this dedication, like the book which follows after it, is
not merely an act of homage. It is a symbol of emancipation from an
influence under which I have lived for two thirds of your lifetime. I
must tell you that I have always been troubled by visions of beings whom
I call dream-women. I was a solitary child. Girls were disconcerting
creatures who revealed to me only the unamiable sides of t