omebody interrupted. And now it's long past midnight. I must try to
send you some answer to your letter. I have been thinking--the
combination may strike you as odd--of North Baxter Court and you. Not
that the happenings of yesterday were unusual. That is just it--they
come almost every day, things like that. And you, with your birds and
rustling trees and your lake--you keep a shiny pistol in the drawer of
your dressing-table, and write me the sort of letter that came from you
this morning. When all these people need _you_--these blind, dumb
animals, stumbling through the sordid, hopeless years--need you,
because, in spite of everything, you are still so much further along
than they, because you are capable of seeing where their eyes are shut,
because you and your kind can help them, and put the germ of life into
the deadness of their days, because of all that makes you what you are,
and gives you the chance to become infinitely more--you, in the face of
all that, can sit down in the fragrance of a garden-scented breeze and
write as you have done about God and the things that matter.

You said that it was not flippancy. Your whole point of view is wrong.
Do not ask me how I "know"--some conclusions do not need to be
analyzed. I wonder if you realize, for instance, what you said about
faith? I haven't the charity to call it even childish. Have you ever
got below the surface of anything at all? Do you want to know what it
is that has brought you to the verge of suicide? It is not your horror
of illness, nor your oddly concluded determination to marry a man whom
you do not love. Suicide is an ugly word--I notice that you avoid
it--and love is a big word; I am using them understandingly and
soberly. You came to the edge of this thing for the reason that there
is not an element of bigness in your life, and there never has been.
You lack the balance of large ideas. This man of whom you tell me--of
course you do not love him--you have not yet the capacity for
understanding the meaning of the word. You like to ride and you like
to dance and you are fond of the things that please, but you do not
love anybody or even any thing. You are living, yes, but you are
asleep. And it is because you are ignorant.

If your letter had been designedly flippant, it would merely have
annoyed. It is the unconscious flippancy in it that is so
discouraging. You do not know what you believe because you believe
nothing. Your