April 29th.
Morning.
How the sea flashes, and the blue, blue sky flashes, too. There’s a boat drifting this way. It looks like a white-winged gull afloat, a messenger of joy. How the waves sing, and their swelling song is all about a little girl in a white sunbonnet picking cherries in the lane. I remember that day, too, Bobby. It was a picnic. You climbed the tree and I caught up my dress to catch the big ripe cherries. When the picnic was over and we got home my gentle mother scolded over the ruined dress. She gave it to the washerwoman’s little girl.
How the waves sing, and their shouting song is—Bobby’s loved one.
Afternoon.
The day’s mood has changed. A cold wind blows in from the sea. If mammy could see me out here on this deserted stretch of shore in the rain and the spray that dashes on me from the stormy, inrushing waves she’d say her prayers in thankfulness that she put the old storm coat and rubbers in, for I’ve got them on.
How fierce the rush of the waves! Something as elementally savage as their assault of the shore stirs in me, writhes in its travail—is born. Bobby is mine.
Dicky, light-hearted, laughing child who would pluck the flower of love as a baby gathers a posy, forgive me.
When the day is hot and the road is long, and the flower of love droops, what then, Dicky?
Night.
I have wired Bobby that I will be in New York Wednesday. It will take me that long to finish the changes in the book. I wired him that my train gets in about five-thirty, and that if he likes I will take dinner with him.