Your letter was wonderful, and I could not write one nearly so
good, or so interesting. I understand how you feel, but I do not
know how to say anything. I feel like that, too, afraid to expect
any happiness, but I want to fight for it. I want to tell God that
I will not be cheated, and that it has all got to come out right.
I go to the movies with mother whenever there is a war picture, to
try and get some idea what it is like over there, but I guess no
one can. That is another thing I don’t dare to think about--all
that you must be suffering. But, Eddie dear, I will try my best to
make it up to you when you get back.
I don’t go to the factory any more, but I have a very nice place as
a milliner with two girls who have a shop in Washington Square. I
am doing nicely. I design the hats myself and make them, and Miss
Sillon says it will not be long before my hats are recognized
everywhere in New York. "Angélique," I call myself on the label I
sew in the hats. She says they are almost too daring, but very
original.
She wanted to write more--much more--about her hats, but she knew it
wouldn’t do. She was required to fill up the letter with general
observations and with her interest in Eddie, and she did so.
She was pleased with this letter, and yet it troubled her. She felt both
mean and cruel. She knew that she had nothing to give Eddie; she knew
that in every way she was defrauding and injuring him. To stifle her
distress she had only her profound faith in herself, her conviction that
she had obliterated the past and could and would make a glorious future.
She couldn’t help contrasting her laboured and prudent letter with his
careless candour. Evidently he didn’t care what he said. He just wrote
her what came to his mind. He felt so sure of her!
"I haven’t really done him any harm," she protested, lying awake in the
dark. "If he never knows, it’s just exactly the same--for him--as if it
had never happened."
And still she knew that she was forcing him to play the part he would
have hated and rejected beyond any other--that of the poor dishonoured
fool. She didn’t even love him.
"I’ll learn to love him!" she cried. "I love him a little bit already."
And still she knew how much she disliked even the memory of his kisses.
Sometimes a wave of sheer terror overcame her.
"No one’s ever done such a thing," she thought, remembering all the
stories she had read. "It can’t be done. Somehow--some day--it would be
found out. It always is!"
But this she could combat.
"I don’t care if it’s never been done!" she would cry. "_I’ll_ do it!
I’ll marry Eddie, and he’ll _never know_, and it’ll all end happily.
I’ll make it! I _won’t_ be found out!"