I shall go on thinking of you, the apples and the gable, and writing you whenever I can get a moment. So much has to be crammed into my narrow evenings and holidays, that I am becoming a poor correspondent with everyone, I fear. You will realize how much I am with you, I feel sure, by other signs. I am sending you a roughly typed sheet containing some lines from _The Bridge_.[29] They symbolize its main intentions. However, as they are fragmentary and not in entirely finished form, please don’t show them around. I only want you to get a better idea of what I’m saying than could be “said” in prose. Some of the lines will be clear enough to give a glimpse of some of my ideas whether or not the Whole can be grasped from such fragments or not. -- -- -- -- 149: TO CHARLOTTE RYCHTARIK [_New York City_] _July 21st ’23_ Dear Charlotte: Your lovely letter came to me this morning ... I read it on the way to work. And I am full of happiness that you think of me as you do,--both you and Richard. Yes, it is my birthday and I must be a little sentimental,--especially as all my friends have recently left the city for places more cool and green and watery. It has been a frightful day, torrid and frying. And I have just come back from a lonely meal in Prince Street,--the place where Richard ate with me, and where I have been many times since he left. Ah, yes, _there_ is wine, but what is wine when you drink it alone! Yet, I am happy here in my room with the Victrola playing Ravel,--the Faery Garden piece which you and I heard so often together up in my room in Cleveland. When I think of that room, it is almost to give way to tears, because I shall never find my way back to it. It is not necessary, of course, that I should, but just the same it was the center and beginning of all that I am and ever will be, the center of such pain as would tear me to pieces to tell you about, and equally the center of great joys. _The Bridge_ seems to me so beautiful,--and it was there that I first thought about it, and it was there that I wrote “Faustus and Helen,” which Waldo Frank says is so good that I will be remembered by that, whether or not I write more or not. And all this is, of course, connected very intimately with my Mother, my beautiful mother whom I am so glad you love and speak about. Indeed it was fine of you to go over and see her as I asked you to do, Charlotte and Richard! And may I also say, in the same breath, that your letter was very painful? It really was,--because I have known all the things you said about her unhappiness for many, many months. _And_ there is really nothing that can be done: that is the worst of it. I am sure if you think a minute about my Grandmother’s age you will realize from that alone that my Mother could not possibly leave her to come here or anywhere else. And my Grandmother, at her age, cannot move. My mother has had her full share of suffering and I have had much, also. I have