don't know which it is. My God, but women can be brutal, though! You
ought to read Jack London's 'The Call of the Wild.' You might
substitute women for dogs. Some years ago I was a feast for the dogs
(women), and now I see much of this same fierce brutality in myself, and
poor Terry is feeling it. I have been away with a man, and Terry somehow
feels it much more keenly than ever before.

"And yet I love Terry: surely if I ever knew what love means, I love him
and have loved him always. Though I am the most brutal person on earth,
I am so without intention, without knowing it even, at times. And I am
so tired that sometimes I have no feeling for anything, not even for
Terry, and he does not understand that. I feel out of harmony with every
one just now. It is hardly indifference, rather a terrible weariness.
Perhaps my recent reading of Nietzsche has helped to give me a feeling
of weary hopelessness. And then, too, the spirit of our salon is gone; I
don't know exactly why. Even Terry has changed very much in his feelings
and ideas. He is not much interested in the things he used to be
absorbed in. He is more cynical, especially of social science, and yet
he seems to me to be making a very science of looking at things
unscientifically. He seems to be holding his emotions in check, is less
impulsive than ever, and is losing much of that delicacy of feeling and
expression which was so admirable in him.

"I too am growing cynical, and I hate to do so. I should like to accept
people at their apparent value and not always look for motives, as I am
getting more and more to do. I should like to approach everything and
everybody with a perfectly open heart, as a child does, but I find that
I no longer do that, that I am always prejudiced. I am sure that this is
due to Terry's influence, for he more and more excludes everything:
nothing is good enough for him. He passes up one person after another
and he has no joy in life. His personality is so much stronger than mine
that I am like a little thin shadow, weaker than water, and he can
always bring me around to see his way of looking at people and things."

This note in Marie--protest against Terry's tendency to cut out the
simple joy of life--grew very strong at a later time; now, however, it
was only suggested, and played no important part.

Indeed, the idea of his leaving her was to her an intolerable thought;
and yet there is many a letter which suggests the approaching
diss