My dear Mr. Neeland:
I had your very kind and charming letter in reply to mine written last January. My neglect to answer it, 152 during all these months, involves me in explanations which, if you like, are perhaps due you. But if you require them at all, I had rather surrender them to you personally when we meet.
Possibly that encounter, so happily anticipated on my part, may occur sooner than you believe likely. I permit myself to hope so. The note which I enclose to you from the lady whom I love very dearly should explain why I venture to entertain a hope that you and I are to see each other again in the near future.
As you were kind enough to inquire about myself and what you describe so flatteringly as my “amazing progress in artistic and worldly wisdom,” I venture to reply to your questions in order:
They seem to be pleased with me at the school. I have a life-drawing “on the wall,” a composition sketch, and a “concours” study in oil. That I have not burst to atoms with pride is a miracle inexplicable.
I have been told that my progress at the piano is fair. But I am very certain I shall do no more with vocal and instrumental music than to play and sing acceptably for such kind and uncritical friends as do not demand much of an amateur. Without any unusual gifts, with a rather sensitive ear, and with a very slightly cultivated and perfectly childish voice—please do not expect anything from me to please you.
In French I am already becoming fluent. You see, except for certain lessons in it, I have scarcely heard a word of English since I came here; the Princess will not use it to me nor permit its use by me. And therefore, my ear being a musical one and rather accurate, I find—now that I look back upon my abysmal ignorance—a very decided progress.
Also let me admit to you—and I have already done so, I see—that, since I have been here, I have had daily lessons in English with a cultivated English woman; and in consequence I have been learning to enlarge a very meagre vocabulary, and have begun to appreciate possibilities in my own language of which I never dreamed.
About my personal appearance—as long as you ask me—I think perhaps that, were I less thin, I might be rather 153 pretty. Dress makes such a vast difference in a plain girl. Also, intelligent care of one’s person improves mediocrity. Of course everybody says such gracious things to a girl over here that it would not do to accept any pretty compliment very literally. But I really believe that you might think me rather nice to look at.
As for the future, the truth is that I feel much encouraged. I made some drawings in wash and in pen and ink—just ideas of mine. And Monsieur Bonvard, who is editor of The Grey Cat—a very clever weekly—has accepted them and has paid me twenty-five francs each for them! I was so astonished that I could not believe it. One has been reproduced in last week’s paper. I have cut it out and pasted it in my scrapbook.