As for Bern, dear, he will survive. I am much older than he is, so that some day he would be forty with all his emotions and I would be fifty with the rheumatism—it would never do. Henceforth I shall be prodigal of negatives, except where Carlton is concerned.
We have attained the intimacy which thinks aloud, and instead of hating Sioux Falls and longing for my sentence to expire, I am beginning to worship every inch of the ground, and only pray that such an exile should last forever.
None of the fulminating fires that I have heretofore known are mine—only calm and peace and the joys born of a perfect understanding. We have not let the moment slip when souls meet in comprehension. I almost decided not to confide all this to you, but it slipped off my pen and I'm not sorry, for no woman living was ever before blessed with a friend like you. You and I have visited the lowest Dantesque circles of despair together, and no confidence between us could amount to an indiscretion.
Our landlady thinks that we are merely speaking acquaintances, and it is best, as this new-found sympathy must not be distilled by Sioux Falls scandal-mongers, though I should like to shout it from the house tops through a megaphone, I am so happy and proud of it.
So you shot with Aldrich and he tried to get you to buy "Steel Preferred." I am glad you did not invest and sorry you did not win the cup. I shall never again shoot for pleasure. I am ashamed of my trophies. Perhaps love has made me mushy but I don't regret it as hate made me flinty. Have you noticed how our bonds have slumped—the whole thing was a Golden Fleece. Commercialism bores me to extinction. I suppose the world began with trade, since Adam sold Paradise for a pippin.
Are you still of the opinion that tradespeople should be branded on the forehead down to the third generation?—you dear snobbish treasure.
Henceforth I shall only deal in sentimental tramways and have shares in the moral funds—maybe not moral according to the threadbare ideal of the genus homo sapiens.
Surprising that a girl as young as Alice Noah—no relation to the fellow who built the ark—should just take out legal separation papers in New York. How can the modus vivendi suit her better than divorce? Perhaps she wants to cinch her alimony until she finds another affinity. Then Alice for Dakota. It is foolish to cut your financial string when you might just as well dangle, especially until you find something worth dropping for.
Dear, will you please send me a reel of Sirdars? I can't smoke anything else and no one sells them out here. Our landlady has one eye that looks up the chimney and another that goes cellar wards and Carlton says that she always regards him obliquely—never mind, she is a good stupid soul and I can forgive a landlady anything but perspicacity. I don't see how our intimacy has escaped her,—to me it looks like the first foreign sticker on an American five dollar dress suit case.
Why do you write such short letters? Is it because you have but a limited number of ideas and must dispense them carefully?