way," she wrote a few days later, "and my horizon looks
bleak and lonely. I want to be alone where I can collect my thoughts,
but, even when Katie is out, I cannot think, but sit by the window
staring at the old women hanging up the clothes which everlastingly flap
on the lines tied between the poor old gnarled willow trees. Poor old
trees, their fate has been very like that of the old women. They bear
their burden uncomplainingly, groan dolefully in the wind, and shake
their old palsied heads. Even the sparrows, true hoboes of the air,
disdain to seek shelter in their twisted arms. They will die as they
have lived, withering away.

"I try to interest myself in household affairs, but that is so stale and
unprofitable. Neither can I read: my thoughts wander away and Terry
intrudes himself constantly on my mind. I may get so desperate that I
will seek a job as a possible remedy: perhaps in that way I could get
tired enough to sleep....

"I have been trying to meet Terry, but he is as elusive as any vagrant
sunbeam. I feel it would do me a world of good to have a long
heart-to-heart talk with him. If I could only see him once a week and
have him sympathise with me in a brotherly fashion and hear him say, in
his old way: 'Cheer up, Marie, the worst is yet to come,' I should be
comparatively happy and satisfied."

Several more days passed, and with the lapse of time Marie's mood grew
blacker. Her next letter to me had a deep note of sorrow and regret and
remorse:

"Terry has been away since August thirteenth. He came, while I was out,
for his things. I fear it is his farewell visit; for he has not shown
the slightest disposition to meet me and talk things over. I have tried
in every way to see him again, but he has thus far ignored my existence.
I had an idea that we two were made for each other, but I have been an
awful fool. Last February, as you know, I had an affair, if it may be
dignified by even that name, and just for the fun of the thing I went
with this light love to Detroit, and came home ill, as you already know.
I returned to Terry full of love and regret and most properly chastened
by my illness and disappointment; for other men almost always disappoint
me. But I found him positively beastly. The way he abused that poor man
was terrible, and I had to defend him, for I know that Terry was unjust
to him. I begged him to blame me, not the other man, for it was all my
doing, but that only made matters worse.