You have let her go, believing that she had been playing a pretty part behind your back, and that I was her confidante, and perhaps also the instigator of her wicked deeds.
Lili has taken refuge with her children’s old nurse.
How significant! Lili, who had so many friends, knows by a subtler instinct that none of them would befriend her in her misfortune. If you, Professor Rothe, were a generous-hearted man, you would explain to the chief doctor at the Infirmary Lili’s great desire to stay near Schlegel until the end comes.
She loves you, and it would fill her with grateful joy.... If Lili had your consent to be near Schlegel she would certainly not refuse to come back to her wifely duties as soon as he was dead. At first she might not be able to conceal her grief, and then it would be your task to help her to regain her peace of mind.... Schlegel was a man, but had he been a portrait or a character in a novel, Lili would have fallen in love with him just the same, because her love was purely of the imagination.
You must do what you please. But one thing I wish you to understand.... If you are not going to act in the matter I shall act. I confess openly that I am a selfish woman, but I am very fond of Lili, and if you abandon her in this cruel and senseless way I shall have her to live with me here, and shall do my best to console her for the loss of an ungrateful husband, and a pack of stupid, undemonstrative children.
One of Lili’s tears is worth more than all your masculine ebulitions of wrath.
One word more before I finish. Lili, so far as I can remember, is a year older than I am. Could you not, woman’s specialist as you are, have found some excuse for her in this fact? Had Lili been fifty-eight or thirty-five, all this would never have happened. I do not care for strangers to look into my personal affairs, and although you are my cousin’s husband, you are practically a stranger to me. Nevertheless, I may remind you that women at our time of life pass through critical moments, as I know by daily experiences. A week or two ago it might have been impossible to write a letter such as this. I should probably have reeled off pages of incoherent abuse.
Show Lili that your love was not selfishness pure and simple.
With kind regards.