e said business kept him away from Chicago
much of the time. I didn't know he was in the army; I suppose now he
belonged in some place near there. And I think you told me he was not
married. He said he was--but was going to be divorced some day. But I
didn't seem to care--didn't think much about it. Nothing really mattered
except the love.

"Then there came a time when I knew I was trying to keep a door
shut--keep the happiness in and the thoughts out. It wasn't that I came
to think it was wrong. But the awful fear that wanted to get into my
heart was that it was _not_ beautiful.

"And it wasn't beautiful because to him it wasn't beautiful. It was
only--what shall I say--would there be such a thing as usurping beauty?
That was the thought--the fear--I tried and tried to push away. I see I
can't tell it; no matter how much we may want to tell everything--no
matter how willing we are--there are things can't be told, so I'll just
have to say that things happened that forced the door open, and I had to
know that what to me was--oh what shall I say, Katie?--was like the
prayer at the heart of a dream--didn't, to him, have anything to do with
dreams, or prayers, or beautiful, far-away things that speak to you from
the stars.

"And having nothing to do with them, he seemed to be pushing them away,
crowding them out, hurting them.

"I haven't told it at all. I can't. But, Katie, you're in the army, you
must admire courage and I want you to take my word for it when I tell you
I did what it took courage to do. I think you'd let me live on in your
heart as Ann if you knew what I gave up--and just for something all dim
and distant I had no assurance I'd ever come near to. For oh, Katie--when
you love love--need it--it's not so easy to let go what's the closest
you've come to it. Not so easy to turn from the most beautiful thing
you've known--just because something _very far away_ whispers to you that
you're hurting beauty.

"I didn't go back. One night my Something Somewhere called me away--and
I left the only real thing I had--and I didn't go back. I don't
know--maybe I'm overestimating myself--perhaps I'm just measuring it by
the suffering--but it seems to me, Katie, that you needn't despise
yourself when loneliness can't take you back to the substitutes offered
for your Something Somewhere. Something in you had been brave; something
in you has been faithful--and what you've actually _done_ doesn't matter
much in comparison