Jan. 22d.
Let us consider the thing calmly. Let us try to say good-by without too
great a clamor. What is the use, after all, of being so vocal? We have
each given the other many hours of pleasure, and shall we not be
grateful rather than tragic? Here we are, got at last to the point where
we face the inevitable, and we may as well do it decently. See, here is
a woman who does not love you: would you have her marry you when she had
rather not? And you mustn't be angry with me because I don't love you,
for how can I help it? So far am I from the least approach to it that it
makes me tired just to think of a thing so strenuous, of the bother of
it, of the perpetual screwed-up condition of mind and body to a pitch
above the normal. The normal is what I want. My heart is set upon it. I
don't want ecstasies. I don't want excitement. I don't want alternations
of bliss and terror. I want to be that peaceful individual a maiden
lady,--a maiden lady looking after her aged father, tending her flowers,
fondling her bees--no, I don't think she could fondle bees,--fondling a
cat, then, which I haven't yet got. Oh, I know I have moods of a more
tempestuous nature, such as the one I was foolish enough to write to you
about the other day, stirring you up to a still more violent
tempestuousness yourself, but they roll away again when they have
growled themselves out, and the mood that succeeds them is like clear
shining after rain. I intend this clear shining as I grow older to be
more and more my surrounding atmosphere. I make the bravest resolutions;
will you not make some too? Dear late friend and sometime lover, do not
want me to give you what I have not got. We are both suffering just now;
but what about Time, that kindest soother, softener, healer, that final
tidier up of ragged edges, and sweeper away of the broken fragments of
the past?