"It isn't only the letters. But it is different. It's different
for good."

She halted a little with that sentence, seeking her expression.
She looked up abruptly into my eyes and moved, indeed slightly,
but with the intimation that she thought our talk might end.

But I did not mean it to end like that.

"For good?" said I. "No! . . Nettie! Nettie! You don't mean that!"

"I do," she said deliberately, still looking at me, and with all
her pose conveying her finality. She seemed to brace herself for
the outbreak that must follow.

Of course I became wordy. But I did not submerge her. She stood
entrenched, firing her contradictions like guns into my scattered
discursive attack. I remember that our talk took the absurd form
of disputing whether I could be in love with her or not. And there
was I, present in evidence, in a deepening and widening distress
of soul because she could stand there, defensive, brighter and
prettier than ever, and in some inexplicable way cut off from me
and inaccessible.

You know, we had never been together before without little enterprises
of endearment, without a faintly guilty, quite delightful excitement.

I pleaded, I argued. I tried to show that even my harsh and difficult
letters came from my desire to come wholly into contact with her.
I made exaggerated fine statements of the longing I felt for her