r! why hadn't you the pluck to hurt me at the beginning, and
tell me what you thought of me and life? You didn't give me a chance;
not a chance. I suppose you couldn't. All these things you and I stood
away from. You let my first repugnances repel you....

"It is strange to think after all these years that I should be asking
myself, do I love you? have I loved you? In a sense I think I HATE
you. I feel you have taken my life, dragged it in your wake for a time,
thrown it aside. I am resentful. Unfairly resentful, for why should I
exact that you should watch and understand my life, when clearly I have
understood so little of yours. But I am savage--savage at the wrecking
of all you were to do.

"Oh, why--why did you give things up?

"No human being is his own to do what he likes with. You were not
only pledged to my tiresome, ineffectual companionship, but to great
purposes. They ARE great purposes....

"If only I could take up your work as you leave it, with the strength
you had--then indeed I feel I could let you go--you and your young
mistress.... All that matters so little to me....

"Yet I think I must indeed love you yourself in my slower way. At times
I am mad with jealousy at the thought of all I hadn't the wit to give
you.... I've always hidden my tears from you--and what was in my heart.
It's my nature to hide--and you, you want things brought to you to see.
You are so curious as to be almost cruel. You don't understand reserves.
You have no mercy with restraints and reservations. You are not really
a CIVILISED man at all. You hate pretences--and not only pretences but
decent coverings....

"It's only after one has lost love and the chance of loving that slow
people like myself find what they might have done. Why wasn't I bold and
reckless and abandoned? It's as reasonable to ask that, I suppose, as to
ask why my hair is fair....

"I go on with these perhapses over and over again here when I find
myself alone....

"My dear, my dear, you can't think of the desolation of things--I shall
never go back to that house we furnished together, that was to have been
the laboratory (do you remember calling it a laboratory?) in which you
were to forge so much of the new order....

"But, dear, if I can help you--even now--in any way--help both of you, I
mean.... It tears me when I think of you poor and discredited. You will
let me help you if I can--it will be the last wrong not to let me do
that....

"You had