Dear Roger,--I can't leave you alone, you see. I must write. But though I must write you need not read. Last night I was seized with misgivings --awful things for a hitherto placid Fräulein to be seized with--and I wrestled with them all night, and they won. So now, in the calm frostiness of the early morning atmosphere, I wish to inquire very seriously, very soberly, whether you have not made a mistake. In one sense, of course, you have. It is absurd, from a wordly point of view, for you to marry me. But I mean more than that: I mean, have you not mistaken your own feelings, been hurled into the engagement by impulsiveness, by, if you choose, some spell I may unconsciously have put upon you? If you have even quite a faint misgiving about what you really feel for me, tell me--oh tell me straight and plainly, and we will both rub out that one weak hour with a sponge well soaked in common sense. It would not hurt so much, I think, now as it might later on. Up to last night, since you left, I've been walking on air. It is a most pleasant form of exercise, as perhaps you know. You not only walk on air, but you walk in what seems to be an arrested sunset, a bath of liquid gold, breathing it, touching it, wrapped in it. It really is most pleasant. Well, I did that till last night; then came my step-mother, and catching at my flying feet pulled them down till they got to the painted deal floors of Rauchgasse 5, Jena, and once having got there, stuck there. Observe, I speak in images. My step-mother, so respectable, so solidly Christian, would not dream of catching hold of anybody's feet and spoiling their little bit of happiness. Quite unconsciously she blew on that glow of sunset in which I was flying, and it went out with the promptness and completeness of a tallow candle, and down came Rose-Marie with a thud. Yes, I did come down with a thud. You will never be able to pretend, however much you try, that I'm one of your fairy little women that can be lifted about, and dandled, and sugared with dainty diminutives, will you? Facts are things that are best faced. I stand five feet ten without my heels, and when I fall I do it with a thud. Said my step-mother, then, after supper, when Johanna had cleared the last plate away, and we were sitting alone--my father is not back yet from Weimar--she on one side of the table, I on the other, the lamp in the middle, your chair gaping empty, she, poor herself, knitting wool into warmth for the yet poorer at Christmas, I mending the towels you helped to wear out, while my spirit soared and made a joyful noise somewhere far away, up among angels and arch-angels and other happy beings,--said my step-mother, 'Why do you look so pleased?' Slightly startled, I explained that I looked pleased because I was pleased. 'But nothing has happened,' said my step-mother, examining me over her spectacles. 'You have been nowhere today, and not seen any one, and the dinner was not at all good.'