"Well, when it comes to 'love', I do love Nan. There you have it, good old-fashioned direct address. She is as immediate to me as my own skin and veins. She always has been. She began to grow into me when she was little, and she kept on growing. There are fibers and rootlets of Nan all through me, and the funny part of it is I love to feel them there. I can't remember being dominated by anybody without resenting it, wanting to get away--escape! escape!--but I never for an instant have felt that about Nan. She's the better part of me. Good Lord! she's the only part of me I take any particular pleasure in or that I can conceive of as existing after I join Old Crow. (Not that I'm allowed to take much pleasure in her now. She sees me when I call, answers when I consult her about the Fund--and she's been tremendously sympathetic and valuable there--but she seems to feel and, I've no doubt, for very good reasons, that we're better apart. She has, I believe, a theory about it; but we needn't go into that. And I don't quarrel with it.) "The queer part of it is that I feel Nan herself couldn't break the bond between us, couldn't if she tried. It's as deep as nature, as actual as Old Crow. I can give you a curious proof of it. I might be almost swamped by somebody--yes, I mean Tira. I might as well say so as hear you saying it over this letter--somebody that is beauty and mystery and a thousand potencies that take hold on nature itself. But that doesn't push Nan away by an inch. If I'm swamped, Nan's swamped with me. If I mourn the beauty and the piteousness withdrawn, Nan mourns, too. It's Nan and I against the world. But it isn't Nan and I with the world. The world is against us. Do you see? For I'm a year older than when I saw you last. And though many of the things you felt about the years weren't true, a lot of 'em were, and they're a little truer now. And one of them is that I've got to give Nan a fighting chance to mate with youth and--oh, exactly what you've got. I wish you had her--no, I'm damned if I do. I may not be young enough for jealousy, but I am unregenerate enough. I probably mean I wish I wished it. For in spite of my revolt against the earth, I'd like to give Nan the cup, not of earth sorceries but earth loveliness, and let her swig it to the bottom. And then, if Old Crow's right and this is only a symbol and we've got to live by symbols till we get the real thing, why, then I'm sentimental enough--Victorian! yes, say it, and be hanged!--to want to believe Nan and I shall some time--some time----Anyhow, I'm not going to ask her to spend her middle years--just think! 'figure to yourself!'--when Nan's forty, what will your revered uncle be?