tch it for myself. Robin
never thought once that he was getting heavenliness--he only thought
that he was giving help. Different from me. And all these years that
I have been prancing around his garden of delight in two hundred dollar
frocks--oh lots of them, for I'm rich and extravagant and I buy things
because they're pretty and not because I need them--all these years he
has been saving most of his seventy-five dollars a month, and getting
sick children sent south, and never mentioning it. Why, I own a place
south. I'm not such a beast but that--well, very likely I am a
beast--I don't know. Anyhow, I've consistently lived the life of a
selfish butterfly. And I cling to it. Despise me if you will. I do.
I like my pretty clothes and my car, and how I do love my two
saddle-horses! And I like dancing, too--I turn into a bird in the
tree-tops when I dance, with not a care, not a responsibility. I don't
want to give all that up. Have I got to? Have I _got_ to "lay down my
life" to find it? For, somehow, cling as I will to all these things,
something is pushing, pushing back of them, stronger than them. You
started it. I want the big things now--I want to be worth while. But
yet clothes and gayety and horses and automobiles--I'm glued tight in
that round. I don't believe I can tear loose. I don't believe I want
to. Do you see--I'm in torment. And--silly idiot that I am--it's not
for me to decide anything. I'm turning into a ton of stone--I'll be a
horrible unhuman monster and have to give it all up and have nothing in
return. Soon I'll lay down my life and _not_ find it. I won't. I'll
pull the trigger. Will I? Do you see how I vacillate and shiver and
boil? This is my soul I'm pouring out to you. I hope you don't mind
hot liquids. What you wrote about the actor made me sit still a whole
half-hour without stirring a finger, with your letter in my hands. It
was glorious--there's no question. You meant it to inspire me. But he
had a job. I haven't. Back to me again, you see--unending me. Do you
know about the man who used to say "Now let's go into the garden and
talk about me"?

In any case, thank you for telling me that story. I'm glad to know
that there are people like that--several of them. I know you and Robin
anyhow, but the actor makes the world seem fuller of courage and
worth-whileness. I wish a little of it would leak into--oh, _me_
again. _Me_ is getting "irksome," as Robin sai