way a girl ought to care for
the man she wants to marry, I would have stood by you through
everything, no matter what you did. I don't do so now, because I find I
don't care for you as much as I thought I did. What has happened has
only shown me that. I'm sorry, oh, so sorry to be disappointed in you,
but it's because I only think of you as being once a very good friend of
mine, not because I love you as you think I did. Once--a long time
ago--when we first knew each other, then, perhaps--things were different
then. But somehow we seem to have grown away from that. Since then we
have both been mistaken; you thought I cared for you in that way, and I
thought so, too, and I thought you cared for me; but it was only that we
were keeping up appearances, pretending to ourselves just for the sake
of old times. We don't love each other now; you know it. But I have
never intentionally deceived you or tried to lead you on; when I told
you I cared for you I really thought I did. I meant to be sincere; I
always thought so until this happened, and then when I saw how easily I
could let you go, it only proved to me that I did not care for you as I
thought I did. It was wrong of me, I know, and I should have known my
own mind before, but I didn't, I didn't. You talk about Dolly Haight;
but it is not Dolly Haight at all who has changed my affection for you.
I will be just as frank as I can with you, Van. I may learn really to
love Dolly Haight; I don't know, I think perhaps I will, but it isn't
that I care for him _just_ because I don't care for you. Can't you see,
it's just as if I had never met you. You know it's very hard for me to
say this to you, Van, and I suppose it's all mixed up, but I can't help
it. You don't know how sorry I am, because we have been such old
friends--because I really did care for you as a friend; it's a proof of
it, that there is no other man in the world I could talk to like this. I
think, too, Van, that was the only way you cared for me, just as a good
friend--except perhaps at first, when we first knew each other. You know
yourself that is so. We really haven't loved each other at all for a
long time, and now we have found it out before it was too late. And even
if everything were different, Van, don't you know how it is with girls?
They really love the man who loves them the most. Half the time they're
just in love with being loved. That's the way most girls love nowadays,
and you know yourself, Van, that