“I can see you’re going to, though. If you ask me—” She stopped.
“I don’t think I like the idea, quite. I never did when I heard of it being done. Why should they send you their photographs?”
“But what’s the harm? Why shouldn’t they?”
“Darling, it’s I am asking you. I’m your mother.”
“Well, if you ask me—” Doda walked over to the window. She stood there a moment looking out. She suddenly turned. “If you ask me, I don’t think it’s right to—Of course if you think it right to—if you’ve been reading my letters—”
“Doda, I haven’t. I just saw them there. But I’d like to read them, Doda. May I?”
“They’re private letters. I don’t see how you can expect me to show you private letters.”
Rosalie went over to Doda and stood by her and stroked her hair. “Doda, I think we’ll look at it like this. Let me read the letters and we’ll talk about them and see if it’s nice to go on writing to the men, in each individual case. That certainly you shall do, continue writing, if it all seems nice to us, together, Doda. If you won’t show them to me—well, let us say if you’d rather not show them to me—then I’ll ask you just to burn them and we’ll forget it.”
Doda stepped violently away from the hand that stroked her hair. “No. I won’t show them.”
“Then it’s to burn them, Doda.”