"I want you to know what is in my mind and heart.... Doubt, a great question over-shadows all else. I ask myself, can a woman love more than once? Is there a love for youth, a love for maturity?... You see, I am not sure that I really love you. I am haunted with the fear that my loneliness, my wounded pride, my unsatisfied life have caused me to seek consolation. And I have come to you for that consolation because I respect and admire you. Propinquity has proved that we are companionable and that we have much in common. But love demands something more than companionship, respect and admiration. _You_ would demand something more.... Whether I am prepared to give you that which you demand is the question. As I feel now, I could not give you all the marriage relation implies. Do you understand my scruples? I have the feeling that to go from one man's arms to another's is nothing short of indecency. Perhaps time will alter the perspective. But I don't know, John, I don't know! You see I want to be honest with you. I want to promise nothing about which I am not sure.... Then, there is your side of it. Can I give all a man expects from the woman he makes his wife? What have I to give? The bloom of my womanhood, the ardent passion of youth is forever gone. What is left may not satisfy you.... It is right that you should go away at once ... but I shall be lonely.... God and my heart alone know how lonely I shall be...." "Margaret, I thank you for your frankness. It only adds to my love for you. I appreciate and respect the feeling which bids you send me away at this time. Only don't sacrifice yourself to a prudish modesty; don't make a fetish of the past. Conserve your tender memories, if you will, but strip them of overvaluation.... You ask what have you to give.... Do you believe that because the bloom of your womanhood, your first passion and its fruition have belonged to another, that there is nothing left to give? Shall I be giving, does any man give, what he demands of a woman as the prerogative of his sex? You see, little woman, we are the victims of a false education. There is one standard for woman, a different standard for man. It is this faulty double standard which is responsible for so many unhappy marriages. Some day this will all be changed. There are signs even to-day of the awakening.... Rid your mind once and for all of the spectre that the past will stand between us. Don't stultify your womanhood with a sentimentalism which is the curse of your sex. Life lies before you. The motherhood which your nature is crying out for is your rightful heritage. Look ahead, dear. Be true to the best that is in you ... and remember ... I am waiting...."