The little booths that hucksters set up round the edge were marked
each one by its little lamp. There were some fires too; and the
light, and the shadows of the people who stood round them to warm
themselves, made a strange pattern all round on the snow-covered
ice. A few people with torches began to travel up and down the
ice, a lit circle travelling along with them over the snow. A
gigantic moon rose, meanwhile, over the trees and the kirk on the
promontory, among perturbed and vacillating clouds.

The walk home was very solemn and strange. Once, through a broken
gorge, we had a glimpse of a little space of mackerel sky, moon-
litten, on the other side of the hill; the broken ridges standing
grey and spectral between; and the hilltop over all, snow-white,
and strangely magnified in size.

This must go to you to-morrow, so that you may read it on Christmas
Day for company. I hope it may be good company to you.

THURSDAY. - Outside, it snows thick and steadily. The gardens
before our house are now a wonderful fairy forest. And O, this
whiteness of things, how I love it, how it sends the blood about my
body! Maurice de Guerin hated snow; what a fool he must have been!
Somebody tried to put me out of conceit with it by saying that
people were lost in it. As if people don't get lost in love, too,
and die of devotion to art; as if everything worth were not an
occasion to some people's end.

What a wintry letter this is! Only I think it is winter seen from
the inside of a warm greatcoat. And there is, at least, a warm
heart about it somewhere. Do you know, what they say in Xmas