“Do you imagine that the cold indifference which your letter displays will have a tendency to lessen my love for you? Do not be misled, I beg of you, for you once descended from your proud station to make love to me, and I have treasured that love and it has grown into such a mountain that no chasm of indifference can ever engulf it, and remember you are his father—my child’s father. He would love you, too, for having loved me, if for no other reason, for, God bless him, he is in love with your old sweetheart. Where I go he will go. I do not love you still with the hope that as in our case at first, love begets love.
“I have long since learned to live to love, and expect nothing but dreams in return. You did love me. No, you did not, or else all the world could not have torn you from me; but you cannot love another. I wish you might, for the goodness which lies within you would shine out and light a world of laggards.
“You ask me if I am comfortable. Yes. I have everything that my physical needs require. I have a good home and plenty to eat and wear. You say you often wonder how I manage to get along in such an expensive city. Now, if you mean that, you love me and you feel that every dollar I have comes without the soil of dishonor. I will tell you how I—we—live. You have raved over my figure; you have worshipped my body as though the presence of my heart were an unheard of thing. Other men have evidently been schooled in the same house of learning as you, for they, too, admire my flesh and bone. Not a day passes but that I form some new acquaintance, and, as I take it, all on account of my shapely limbs, my slender waist and swelling bosoms. Those very possessions which were once yours, all yours for your own aggrandizement and worshipful indulgence; those charms which held you to me—the wealth of red-gold hair, the pink-tipped ears, the pearly white teeth, the tapering hands, the high-arched foot, the delicately moulded ankles, the laughing eyes and supple grace that you so admired, even before I gave to you a son, are as much admired by other men as they once were admired by you.
“It is different, though, with them and you. You held all of the then priceless pearls with nothing but love; the same possessions which were then yours because I loved you, are now dispensed at intervals to suit the convenience of other men and for financial consideration.
“We—you and I—can remember the time when no man but you could lay claim to any of my charms except my ready smile and kindly word.
“Now, and for two years past, my charms have been the property of a public who, while not so demonstrative as you once were, seem wild to have me disport myself for the edification of mankind.
“I often ask if I wrong a nature-loving public by allowing the use of my body to fulfill their desires.
“My natural answer is no. I feel, in fact, that I may be the means of saving some timid girl the embarrassment of assuming my place in the world. I am sure I can do more to satisfy the whims of humanity than can a novice, for I am a student of your school and your ideas are instilled within me until I feel that my efforts will avail more than the efforts of an inexperienced girl. Again, I am feeding and clothing myself and our baby, and I love you. The world will, in part, frown upon me for the part I am playing; others silently applaud me, and I congratulate myself and feel, in a certain degree, I am a guardian angel and the precepts inculcated by my conduct will be fittingly heralded to ears which will transmit them to the heart with a good effect. I am doing what you might not object to your divorced wife doing, but that which no man of high honor would consent to his daughter doing.
“I am a model at the Art Institute. I pose in the nude, and I thank God I am an honorable woman, and, in spite of all the years of suffering, I am still devoted to the man who taught me to love. With thanks for your inquiry, I beg to sign for this once,