It is useless for me to say, "Do not be angry." You would not be what you are if you were not annoyed about it.
You are young, life lies before you. I am old. In a very few years I shall be so old that you will not be able to realise that there was a time when I was "the one woman in the world" for you. I am not harping on your youth in order to vex you—your youth that you hate for my sake! I know that you are not fickle; but I know, too, that the laws of life and the march of time are alike inexorable.
When I enter the new home you have planned for me, a lonely and divorced woman, I shall think of you every day, and my thoughts will speak more cordial thanks than I can set down coldly in black and white on this paper.
I do not forbid you to write to me, but, save for a word of farewell, I would prefer your silence. No letters exchanged between us could bring back so much as a reflection of the happy hours we have spent together. Hours in which we talked of everything, and chiefly of nothing at all.
I do not think we were very brilliant when we were together; but we were never bored. If my absence brings you suffering, disappointment, grief—lose yourself in your work, so that in my solitude I may still be proud of you.
You taught me to use my eyes, and there is much, much in the world I should like to see, for, thanks to you, I have learnt how beautiful the world is. But the wisest course for me is to give myself up to my chosen destiny. I shut the door of my "White Villa"—and there my story ends.
Your
Elsie Lindtner.
Reading through my letter, it seems to me cold and dry. But it is harder to write such a letter to a dear friend than to a stranger.