"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.
"I know that some people can conceal their obnoxious qualities and show
only the sweet and lovely side of themselves. I sometimes like to see
the reverse side of the medal, and I expected Terry, as a student of
humanity and an anarchist, to welcome any phase of character which might
enable him to understand me more completely.
"I must hesitate in attributing Terry's attitude to jealousy, for I have
had some affairs before, and he never seemed to care about them in the
least; indeed, I often felt piqued, and thought he did not mind because
he did not care about me enough. The following two weeks were, I can
truly say, the most infernal and awful that ever happened to me, and I
wished thousands of times that I might die, and I did come very close to
it. I cannot describe that hellish time or give you any idea of Terry's
conduct during those weeks. He was no longer the calm, philosophical
Terry that you know, but the most terribly cruel thing the mind of man
can conceive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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