Thank you very much for your fine appreciation of my literary work in the September CRISIS. When I read something like that, it makes me regret that I stopped writing and resolve to start up again. However, it is not always easy to get the attention of publishers or of the public after one has stopped for so long a time.

There are several reasons why I have not written, some of them psychological, which are most difficult to explain. However, to have written enough to bring forth an article ‸such as yours from such a critic as yourself, is almost enough in itself for any writer, though he never did any more.

It seems a pity that a man, in writing such an article, cannot refer to himself, for your name would have stood very high in the list you have mentioned.

I have not read "THE HOUSE BEHIND THE CEDARS" over recently, but I am fairly familiar with its important incidents, and I have been wondering just what particular incident you had in mind that puzzles you "That human nature betrays its most passionate instincts at a moment of the intensest crises." I would accept your judgment on the matter as better than my own, though ordinarily one would expect one's deepest instincts to find expression, almost unconsciously, in moments of extreme feeling.

If you will be good enough to enlighten me, I shall thank you still more.