After all, it’s much the same to me whether I have a camera, cacti, or a little child for a hobby. You needn’t be afraid that I shall plant it in a flower-pot like a cutting, or pin it into my lace collection. It shall, I promise you, be properly cared for, not by me, but through me. I will engage the best nurse money can procure. If you like, too, I will sail with the nurse over the whole width of the Atlantic to receive the little eel in person. The more I think it over, the more excellent the plan seems to me. You will have no bother, will not be interrupted in your career, and I shall add to the long list of my crazes one more item. To prevent there being any sort of misunderstanding about it, I am perfectly confident that providing for the little legacy will be a source of new enjoyment to me.
I only make one condition, and that is, if the affair becomes too complete I may be allowed to put “our child” out to nurse.
It is to be hoped that the father has not won a fraction of your heart. I can well imagine that he is some young artist whom you have met at the class. He gazed at your hair till he was sick, which is not at all to be wondered at, and you forgot momentarily that you had long ago abjured all folly.
Write me more details as to whether you approve; when “it” is expected, and so on. I needn’t advise you, of course, to leave Paris before the change in your exterior attracts notice. I am thinking a great deal of you, Jeanne, little Jeanne.
Your
Elsie.
Dear Magna Wellmann,
And I am the woman who thought you had forgotten me, or that you still bore me a grudge for that letter which I wrote you four—no, it is already five—years ago.
Now I sit here and ponder whether the greatest transformation has been worked in you, or in me. You, at all events, are not the same, and I believe that I am not. But at our age, one is long past growing and developing.