Damp English day, in which I’ve thought persistently of Aurora. My recurrent images of women appear less like memories than a means of restoring life to what has mattered and was passingly eclipsed by war. It is ten years now since she and I first met and were lovers; six years since I last saw her. I realise, too, that I now have a substantial past—which means that I am no longer young but have become more interesting to myself. I used to think that our story, hers and mine, was far fetched, even freakish; but see now that the experiment of love is itself aberrant, more often than not, and doesn’t lend itself to classification. A letter this week from Aurora, funny and charming, put me in mind of all that, and prompted a dream of her, with predictable result.