Yvette to Henri.

Monday 8 September. Belmont

My darling, I will try not to complain about the distance of the days. For haven’t we both decided to keep smiling during these weeks of waiting. Are you doing it? You are in the office now. It is two o’clock and you are thinking about the lovely quiet night you are going to spend without that fat little uproar who takes up three-quarters of the bed! As for me, darling, I spent the morning with Zouzou picking blackberries along the hedges for making jam. Early this morning – finish with the bad habits! – I have already made plum jam and I think of having at least 30 pots for the winter. Can you think of an occupation more peaceful and calming than making jam? I find it exactly to my taste, with the little kid Zouzou hopping about around me and the very little one who begins to show signs of his existence. It is frightful darling; I am getting bigger already. Poor you! You will be afflicted with a veritable barrel. I have to buy a brassiere; mine have literally split. I am going back to Paris before the end of the week to get on with the apartment business. It has become an obsession. I want very much to find one before you arrive and have it all ready so you can see that your wife is, after all, good at something. […] I am incapable of thinking of anything except that apartment. No. That’s not true. I think of you, of Zouzou, of the baby. But that’s not a matter of spirit, but of biology. How would you explain it?

Would you, anyhow, write me a little something, darling? Lacking current letters, I re-read your old ones and it is strange to again find that miserable anxiety of past years. […] When will you be here darling? Do you know already? I wait for you since I saw you through the little aeroplane window at Warsaw. I wait impatiently with a pure and happy heart. See you very soon darling.  Don’t be sad. Don’t pine for what has made me feel bad. I embrace you darling. I wait for you, very gently. I love you

Your Yvette.

All is well with Helene. I will stay in a hotel in Paris, to have peace. I will give you the address when I have it. I love you; I love you, my darling.