Dearest Lorna:
For the last time I am writing to you from the place which is dearest to me in all the universe. My personal things are packed and on the way to Custer. Tokacon is waiting with his torch to set fire to my palace of dreams.
I could not return to your world—to my old world if I thought that other souls than ours were living in my home. The land, I have given to my Indian with sufficient money to build a home for himself, but not one corner of my own shall remain to be profaned by other human emotions.
Now I am sitting in the machine at a safe distance from the flames, which amuse my son, who is wild with joy and excitement over it. Tokacon groans and I weep, for it is a tomb in flames before us. Ashes—ashes—everywhere—in my home and in my heart, and every where except in the smiles of my child.
Donald has given me back my home and he has taken rooms at the club—what people think and what people say, mean nothing to me. I shall try bravely to construct something out of the ashes of three lives that will be worthy of the respect of God's elect. I cannot teach myself to forget; I can only await with patience the reawakening which for the sake of Donald and my son, pray God, will not delay too long its coming. I suppose the family cannot be built on a foundation of passion, because something on earth always becomes revengeful when human beings are too happy. I shall never try to be too happy again.
Now my memories must lie entombed in the arcana of memory. But some day when my son is old enough to understand, I shall come back with him to my Black Hills of Dakota, and breathe to him every sigh of my sorrow. Then if he takes me in his arms and whispers "Precious Mother," I shall not have loved and cherished in vain.
MARIANNE.