o he wrote me: "No one, very close to me geographically,
can ever get much out of me. This is a family trait and is too deep for
me. So don't be downcast if we should ever meet again and you should
find me as stoical as some crustacean of the past. Some such
antediluvian feeling animates me to take advantage of your distance and
clamour up out of the depths."

He did, indeed, "clamour up out of the depths" very eloquently, but when
I saw him in Chicago I found that I had somehow "lost touch," like the
rest of the world, with him. He felt it and wrote me:

"While you were in Italy, I sent you a letter in which I represented
myself as one clamouring up out of the depths of his being to you who
might understand. Now I sincerely and deeply regret having made this
attempt with you. In the same letter I predicted that your return might
find me back in the depths of my being, where I belong. I regret I did
not stay there when you came along. This feeling is due to no fault of
yours or mine; but points to the fact that I must become still more
exclusive and circumspect."

Of Marie he wrote: "This attachment between two human beings is in all
circumstances very terrible. The bond between Marie and myself was as
strong as death, and partly so because of our great and essential
differences. The first night we spent together struck one of the deep
things in our discord. I was too nervous and sensitive to touch her that
night, and in the morning she bitterly reproached me. The first book
that really aroused her to the meaning of life was '_Mademoiselle de
Maupin_.' Deeper than this difference was her galling interference in my
affairs which never prompted me to meddle in hers. And her failure to
appreciate or reciprocate my respect for the integrity of her
personality is the hardest blow she can ever give to me. I have the same
fatal charge to make against almost all men; the exceptions are so few
and doubtful that I doubt whether I can ever gain from another that
intense receptive attitude which I am willing to bestow. Fortunately for
me, this illusion that there are such intense perceivers re-creates
itself out of the veriest dust and dross of humanity. Like Shelley's
'Cloud,' my illusion may change, but it cannot die. Now I am in a state
of mind when I am willing to let everything go by default--everything
except my last illusion, that I can never let myself out to anyone. To
Marie--and to you--and one or two others--I have bee