I'd have answered your letter earlier only I haven't had any heart for writing letters. Fate has knocked me out again. God knows I've tried, and cut out the drink, and worked hard, and suffered agonies of the damned, but it doesn't do any good. The world isn't big enough for people like me to hide in, and the only thing I can't understand is why people like me are ever born. What's the use of it all, V.V., I can't see to save my life. The trouble all came from a fellow named Bellows, from home, a machinery salesman with T.B. Wicke Sons, you may know him, who dropped off the train here a week ago Saturday. He saw me on the street one day, and then he went and told everybody that I was in Texas because I'd been drummed from home. Said I went out rowing with a girl and upset her and then swam off for my skin and she was nearly drowned. I've made some good friends here--or had made them, I'd better say--and one of them rode out to our place and said I ought to know what Bellows was saying, so I could thrash him before he skipped town. Oh, what could I say. Then I saw Miss Taylor just now, she's the girl from the East I mentioned in the winter, and she asked me had I heard what they were saying. I wanted to lie to her, and she'd have believed me if I had, but you couldn't lie to her, and so I said straight out I was crazy drunk at the time and didn't know what I was doing, but I guessed most of it was true. She cares a lot about those things, and I think she'd been crying. God help me. So now everything's changed here; it reminds me of home the way people look at me. Miss Taylor was the worst, she's been so fine to me. She said come to see her in two or three days, when she'd had time to think, and if she casts me off, I can't stand it here any longer, and I don't see how I can begin all over again, just when life was seeming as if it might be worth while again. So now, you see, V.V., why I wasn't prompter answering your letter. I've tried to keep my courage up like you advised, but it's too much for one man to carry. May you never know the awful feeling that you're an outcast, not wanted anywhere, is the wish of Your unhappy friend, DAL. P.S. How's father, do you ever see him these days? Don't let him know any of this. The girl looked through the rose-flowered curtains down into the sunny street....