"If it were not for the pain it has cost you—I would be glad of the chance which threw us together in Paris. The days which followed were the most joyous I have ever known—almost the only ones. I have not found life a happy business. Surely you won't, I doubt if anyone does, realize how sad the world seems to me. But somehow, out of the overwhelming misery about us, you helped me to escape awhile, helped me to snatch some of 'the rarely coming spirit of delight.' They were perfect—those never-to-be-forgotten days on the open road.
"I can't—even after all this thinking, and I have thought of nothing else—understand clearly, what happened at Moret. When you began to talk love to me—well—it was the first time in my life, I did not want to run away. We all have our woman's dream hidden somewhere within us. I don't remember what you said to me there on the bridge but suddenly my dream came big. Love seemed something I had always been waiting for. I kept asking myself 'can this at last be love'—and because I did not want to run away I thought it was.
"When you came to my room I was drunk with the dream. That you did not take advantage of my bewilderment—well—that's what I meant when I said I could think of no finer love than what you have given me. I could not have reproached you if you had. God knows what it would have meant. It might have turned the balance, I might have loved you—in a way. But it would not have been you, and it would not have been what you wanted.
"When you went away, I began to recall your words—I had scarcely heard them—and then I realized what you wanted. It seemed very beautiful to me and—will you believe it—I wanted to give it to you, be it for you. But as the hours slipped by the fear grew that I could not, grew to certainty. And I was afraid that if I stayed, I would cheat you. And so, in fear, I ran away.
"I know I must have seemed very cruel to you that morning. And I am writing all this in the hope that you will understand that I was harsh because I was afraid, it was the cruelty of weakness. I wanted to put my arms about you and cry. You will see that it was better that I did not. For now—with a cool head—it is very clear to me, not only that I could not be to you what you wish, but that at bottom I do not want to. I do not love you.
"I would like to make this sound less brutal, but it is true. It's not only in regard to socialism that our view-points are miles apart, but also in this matter of love.
"The porter is calling the 'bus for my steamer. I must stop or miss the tender. It is just as well. If I have not shown you in these few pages what I feel, I could not in twice as many."
I was not man enough to take my medicine quietly. The letter jerked me out of my lethargy, threw me into a rage, the worst mood of my life. I cursed Suzanne, cursed love, cursed Europe. I engaged passage on the first boat home. I took along Suzanne's rucksac with the intention of having its contents laundered and returning it to her with a flippant, insulting note. I occupied most of the time till the boat sailed, on its composition. On board I drank hoggishly, gambled recklessly—and as such things often go—won heavily.
But the last night out, anchored off quarantine, the fury and the folly left me. After all I had been making an amazing tempest in a teapot. What did it matter whether my love affair went straight or crooked? I felt so much the spoiled child, that I was ashamed to look up at the eternal, patient stars. After the vague open spaces of the sea, the crowded harbor, the distant glow and hum of the great city, seemed real indeed. A flare of rockets shot up from Coney Island, dazzled a moment and went out. I laughed. The lower lights along the shore were not so brilliant—but abiding.
I leaned over the rail and strained my eyes towards the city. And it seemed as if life came to me through the night as a thing which one might hold in the hand and study.