... Of course I am in the wrong. You have been very kind to me and from the ordinary point of view you would doubtless have made a very good husband. You are quite entitled to consider yourself shabbily treated. I am wholly in the wrong. But I am not going to make myself everlastingly unhappy just to put myself in the right. And whether you would have made me a good husband or not, I should certainly have made you a bad wife. I am a peculiar person, and I would never marry a man just because he would make a good husband.... Surely you don’t imagine I am going to marry you just to let you out of the difficulty of explaining things at home? ... A thing like that proves at once the complete misunderstanding that exists between us two.... You must tell your parents and Helen exactly what has happened, viz. that I have jilted you. If you were a woman you could claim a few hundred pounds damages for breach of promise.... Tell them I have jilted you because I could not bear the thought of marrying you. Blame me entirely: I am heartless and a flirt, cruel, treacherous and anything else you like. Only I am not such a fool as to marry somebody I don’t want to marry.... Don’t imagine I am in love with somebody else. At present I am not in love with anybody. At one time I thought I was in love with you, but I am doubtful if it ever was so really. I think it was just that you hypnotized me by being in love with me yourself. I mean, I was so interested in your experience.... I don’t ask you to forgive me. Because forgiving won’t make any difference. I may have done right or I may have done wrong, but I have done what I would do over again if I had to. There is no repentance in me. It is idle to pretend I am sorry. I am extraordinarily glad to have got out of a difficult position.... This letter, by the way, is the first sincere letter I have ever written to you. I do not mean that the others were all insincere: I mean that, compared with this one for truth and sincerity, the others were simply--nothing.... As to my present attitude towards you I will be offensively straightforward. I do not like you. That ought to convince you finally of the uselessness of answering this letter.... § 8