I hope you're not feeling too badly about Margarita--don't. Of course I understand what the stage has lost, and you will confess that I was as anxious for her career as anybody, even when I was sorriest for Roger. I wanted her to have her rights as an artist. But if _she_ doesn't want them--ah, that's a different pair of sleeves altogether. She has sent me her latest photograph, and the eyes are all I need. Of course, I have no such brilliant future to sacrifice, but if I had, I am sure I should throw a dozen of them over the windmill for two eyes like hers to-day! I don't know why I am prosing along at this rate and avoiding the main object of this letter. I must plunge right into it, I suppose, and get it over. Don't think I don't appreciate all your kind, your generous, offer meant, Jerry. I thought of it so often and so long before I gave you that brusque answer. And it tempted me for a moment--indeed it did. I think, as you say, that we could travel very comfortably together and we have many of the same tastes--I know no one so sympathetic as you. As for "nursing a rheumatic, middle-aged wanderer through assorted winter-climates," that is absurd, and you know it, though I should be glad enough to do it, if it _were_ true, as far as that goes. I know all you would do for the children, and how kind you would be to them. Not that I like that part, though, to be quite frank. I could never love another woman's children (especially if I loved their father) and I can't understand the women that do. So I always imagine a man in the same position. And I can't help feeling, Jerry, that if you _really_ loved me--loved me in the whole crazy sense of that dreadful world, I mean--that you wouldn't speak so sweetly about the children: how could you? How can any man--I couldn't, if I were one! But this is very unfair, because you never said you did love me in that way--don't imagine that I thought so for a moment. Jerry dear, my best friend now, for I must not count on Roger any more, do you think I am blind? Do you think I have been blind for three years? And will you think me a romantic, conceited fool when I say that unless I--even I, a widow and a jilt, who hurt a good man terribly and got well punished for it!--can have the kind of love that you can never give me, because you gave it to someone else three years ago, I don't want to accept your generous kindness? You see, I know how you can love, Jerry, just as I see now that I never knew how Roger could until those same three years ago. Of course he didn't either--would he ever have known the difference, I wonder, if we had married?