future may bring. If we are not together, all the world cannot fill
the void.

You say that I have given an impulse to your life: that you read
more, study more, take a keener interest in everything. You could
not possibly have said a thing which could have given me more
pleasure than that. It is splendid! It justifies me in aspiring to
you. It satisfies my conscience over everything which I have done.
It must be right if that is the effect. I have felt so happy and
light-hearted ever since you said it. It is rather absurd to think
that _I_ should improve you, but if you in your sweet frankness say
that it is so, why, I can only marvel and rejoice.

But you must not study and work too hard. You say that you do it to
please me, but that would not please me. I'll tell you an anecdote
as a dreadful example. I had a friend who was a great lover of
Eastern literature, Sanskrit, and so on. He loved a lady. The lady
to please him worked hard at these subjects also. In a month she had
shattered her nervous system, and will perhaps never be the same
again. It was impossible. She was not meant for it, and yet she
made herself a martyr over it. I don't mean by this parable that it
will be a strain upon your intellect to keep up with mine. But I do
mean that a woman's mind is DIFFERENT from a man's. A dainty rapier
is a finer thing than a hatchet, but it is not adapted for cutting
down trees all the same.

Rupton Hale, the architect, one of the few friends I have down here,
has some most deplorable views about women. I played a round of the
Byfleet Golf Links with him upon Wednesday afternoon, and we
discussed the question of women's intellects. He would have it that