Now I have come to it. I have come to it. Please do not be angry, or hurt, but let me say what I can no longer carry about with me unsaid. Try if you cannot, slowly and by degrees, break yourself of the habit of resorting to means which, instead of strengthening, undermine your health. In the name of my love I ask you to do this, and you must not think that I ask for my sake alone. Then if it happened that I was going to die, and knew that I was going to die to-day, so that I should never see you, or hear your voice again, I should still make the same request. Why will you be kind to every one but to yourself? A doctor said to me about you—No, those are words that may not be repeated....
Now say with a smile that I am conjuring up bogies, that my feelings have got the better of me, and perhaps you are right, but, beloved, death is not the worst. Do you understand me now?
I sit here and write in the bright sunshine. My children play round my skirts, and chatter and ask me why I am crying....
Well, now it is said, and now that I have said it, I dare not let you read what I have written.
But I will keep this letter with the rest of your letters, with the letters which you have never received. Should the day ever come when I have sufficient courage you shall read it.
Only this one, of all the letters.
AN UNSENT LETTER FROM LILI ROTHE TO PROFESSOR ROTHE.
Henry, I had on my mind to write to you and, for the last time, ask you to forgive me, but I know that it is no use. Perhaps your forgiveness could do me no good now. It is too late. I have suffered so much. I cannot bear more. But this letter contains nothing but the truth, and it is the last letter that I shall write.