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JL  Oh, that's marvelous, just marvelous.

EM  You see, I'm working on a life of Hartley. I've already published a monograph, and that's the reason I wanted to talk with you because I wanted to talk with the people who knew Hartley. I knew Hartley slightly, but not well, and I knew that you liked him, and I wanted to get this positive reaction to his personality.

JL  It is an interesting thing. I am myself puzzled with our meeting because of this mystery, this letter which came to me from the other side. You know, it came when he was dead, and it pleased me enormously. You know it was such a marvelous letter.

EM  Was Hartley in good physical condition when you knew him? 

JL  Yes, never complained. What was it--something like the draft. It was during the war. And people of a certain age have to go to register. I went, you know, even though I was not an American I had to go. And he said something like he was afraid that they would take him, something like that.

EM  He was over sixty. You see, I have a theory about Hartley which I can't prove because his doctor is dead, but I have a theory that the last few years of his life he wasn't in good health.

JL  He wasn't.

EM  Well, I just have this feeling. Now his face didn't show it, did it ?

JL  No, He had a very complex face--of a man strong and weak (all at once?) and he was tough, and he was childish and intelligent at the same time. 

EM  Oh, he was very ambivalent 

JL  And at the same time very naive because of this to me it was a marvelous