MARIANNE. Black Hills, November 25. Dearest: How happy your letter has made me and how slow you were in making up your mind, but I'd rather have you love me after thinking than to love me just because I'm I. Had you not understood, I should have loved you but because you understand I bow down and idolize you as I have done all my days. Every girl deserves a mother--it is her natural heritage and Nature risks a great deal in cheating her out of her original right. I have been defrauded, but a friend like you compensates for much and is a straight gift from God and Heaven. Carlton and I have motored over to Custer every day for your letter but not until yesterday were we recompensed for all the anxiety and doubt that I might have suffered. We read it together and I am not ashamed that our eyes were moist with joy as we drove slowly away from the little village and out into our free and glorious primevalism again. The twilight fell like a silver dust on the crests of two double rows of ancient elms in a long and lordly country road, and lighted up the sand and the drying wild grass that had waved like so many spears of gold in the sunset of a few moments before. On and on we flew--he with a trembling hand on the wheel and I with my arm around him and my lips pressing his cheek. The rays of our acetylene lamps began to cast lurid lights before us as the darkness thickened, just as my soul's fire is luminous now in an atmosphere ordained to bring forth all its normal glory--and all the while the back seats were empty; empty dear. Do you know the luxury of it? We were both dreaming and praying--dreaming of a thousand more such perfect nights, praying in all our fervor and gratitude for more and yet more of our boundless and mutual passion. And then we lost our way as the machine rushed into a mystic cross-road that led due north, for the Dipper was before us. I crawled closer and closer to him until I could hear his heart pounding mercilessly as his breath came quicker and my lips pressed closer. The lamps were brilliant then and the woods and fields as silent and endless as eternity. A long snake stretched its lazy length across our path and frogs held mute high carnival on all the little hills and bumps on the high road. We both felt the inspiration of the moment and neither profaned it with words. As far as our lights fell three waving, nodding bands of seered grass, beckoned us on and heedless of the danger we might be rushing toward--our empassioned lips met. And like eternity the mystic course lay hidden in darkness before us, but also like the things that look most forbidding in the future, as we rushed by, the yellow hedge turned golden by our lamps, the grassy plumage rose and fell in sallow waves of approbation.