o give myself up to my chosen
destiny. I shut the door of my "White Villa"--and there my story ends.

Your
ELSIE LINDTNER.

Reading through my letter, it seems to me cold and dry. But it is harder
to write such a letter to a dear friend than to a stranger.

LANDED ON MY ISLAND.
CREPT INTO MY LAIR.

The first day is over. Heaven help me through those to come! Everything
here disgusts me, from the smell of the new woodwork and the half-dried
wallpapers to the pattering of the rain over my head.

What an idiotic notion of mine to have a glass roof to my bedroom! I
feel as though I were living under an umbrella through which the water
might come dripping at any moment. During the night this will probably
happen. The panes of glass, unless they are very closely joined
together, will let the water through, and I shall awake in a pool of
water.

Awake, indeed! If only I ever get to sleep! My head aches and burns from
sheer fatigue, but I have not even thought of getting into bed yet.

For the last year I have had plenty of time to think things over, and
now I am at a loss to understand why I have done this. Suppose it is a
piece of stupidity--a carefully planned and irrevocable folly? Suppose
my irritable nerves have played a trick upon me? Suppose ... suppose ...

I feel lonely and without will power. I am frightened. But the step is
taken; and I can never turn back. I must never let myself regret it.

This constant rain gives me an icy, damp feeling down my back. It gets
on my nerves.

What shall I come to, reduced to the society of two females who have
nothing in common with me but our sex? No one to speak to, no one to
see. Jeanne is certainly attractive to look at, but I cannot converse
with her. As to Torp, she suits her basement as a gnome suits his
mountain cave. She looks as though she was made to repopulate a desert
unaided. She wears stays that are crooked back and front.

Never in all my life have I felt so disappointed, and compelled to put a
good face upon a bad business, as when I splashed through the wet
garden and entered the empty house where there was not even a flower to
welcome my arrival. The rooms are too large and bare.... Why did I not
think of that before?

All the same, decorum must be maintained, and my entry was not
undignified.

Ah, the rain, the rain! Jeanne and Torp are still cleaning up. They mean
to go on half the night, scrubbin