"Are we so terribly far apart? I'm beginning to understand there's plenty about me you don't even like. It's not strange. Didn't I tell you at the start, or try to, that I'm not easy to get along with? I often have a bad enough time trying to get along with myself. But Jimmy, Dearest, _all_ people are far apart in a lot of important ways. No exceptions. And all people have elements in common too, things they can share, use to bridge the gulf between self and self, if they only knew it. Don't you think we have enough in common so that if we both tried hard and honestly and lovingly, we could live happily together? "I know, I know--I wrote that as if I were assuming that Ann would set you free. Oh, I like you and don't like you, for not wanting to talk about her with me. Like you for it because I know it's loyalty, you're trying to be fair to her, spare her pain, you still love her in many ways--and somehow I know about all of them, and respect every one of them whether you believe that or not. And dislike it, it hurts, because--well, because I happen to be the one under the gun, Jimmy, and I keep thinking if I knew more about her I might see my own way better. I love you in ways she never imagined, couldn't imagine. She's not a passionate woman, Jimmy--as I don't suppose you need to be told. She's sweet, possessive, domestic, good to you so far as she knows how to be, loves you in her fashion so long as you conform to what she wants you to be. Undoubtedly it troubles her that you haven't happened to have children yet. Loves you in her fashion--oh, Jimmy, to my thinking, and I'm not a fool, loving an image of what you'd like another person to be, that's not love at all, just self-love and arrogance. "Am I doing it too? Am I in love with what I wish you were? I mustn't _always_ shy away from that thought--I'll have to look at it straight some time, can't now somehow, not now, not now. I don't think it's true. Anyway I will assure you, pretty Ann never woke up at night whimpering your name and tasting blood on her lip. "There's no solution that won't hurt somebody. I'm selfish too--like you, like Ann if she knew and understood, I don't want to be hurt any more than I have been. I don't hate Ann, I don't want to hate her. I don't want anything except to get away somewhere with you--are we savages to be held in line by magic words mumbled in the mouth of a priest?--because I love you best and need you. "Silence is the cruelest of a coward's weapons. It's not like you to use it against me. Please write, or call me. Please come to me. "Callista."