"However, hope has not entirely left me. After being so intimate with Terry for seven years I ought surely to know something of his moods and disposition; and I do hope and expect that he will in time grow weary of roaming about and living the way he does now and that he will begin to yearn for feminine influences and caprices and tyrannies, and I hope, for mine in particular!...
"I should be much happier if I did not care for him so much, and I hope that in time I may have only a strong friendly interest in him. At times I envy him: he is so care-free, without the slightest responsibility toward anything or anybody; he can break from old associations and habits so easily and light-heartedly. I never could have done that....
"I am awfully absent-minded these days; you would laugh at some of the funny things I do. I ride on the cars miles past my street, and wander about and forget where I am going. Sometimes I think of things and then forget I was thinking."
In another six weeks' time came still more gloomy news:
"Our meetings are as uncertain, unpremeditated, and unarranged as his wanderings about the city are. It happened that I was all alone for the whole of last week, eight precious days of freedom, especially from Katie and her woes. I love her, as you know, but she does get on my nerves, at times. So I wrote Terry, asking him to come and visit with me for several days. It must have been my Jonah day, for the letter reached him, and he came and stayed here with me for the whole seven days. During this time we talked a great deal of our life together and of our life since we have not been together, and with his most calm and philosophical air he spoke of our circumstances, past and present. It seemed so pleasant and homelike, so much like the old days, to have dear Terry here with me, and I felt such lazy content to see and hear him, that at times I awoke with a start, for I could not keep myself from the idea that our separation was only a horrid dream.
"So, when he said things that ought to have hurt me dreadfully, I positively couldn't feel hurt. Somehow, the sound of his voice was so pleasing that I missed the sting of some of his pessimistic reflections about our love; it seemed to me that he spoke of others, surely not of our two selves! But now, since he has gone, and I have been forced to think of the things he said, many of the easily accepted but only half understood reflections on our love have come back to me with all their sting. And I must now believe that I have passed out from Terry's life utterly, and that there is no return, nor hope of return. The most I could possibly hope for is an indifferent friendship, for so he has willed it, or perhaps fate, rather, has so willed it. 'Dead love can never return,' he said. And I am now only one of the people he knows! It is so terrible that I must avoid the blow, must seek an independence of my own.