talked and smiled and bewitched yourself straight to the point where you
now are. You were eager and curious about pleasures, and the world has
dealt liberally with you.

Were you perilously near the crisis when you wrote me? Did the reflective
tone come because you were brought at last squarely to the mark, because
you must decide what one of the possible conceptions of life you really
want? Don't think, I pray you; go straight on to the inevitable solution,
for when you become conscious you are lost.

Do you wonder that I love you, my hybrid rose; that I follow the heavy
petals as they push themselves out into their final bloom; that I gather
the aroma to comfort my heart in these lifeless pages? I follow you about
in your devious path from tea to dinner or dance, or I wait at the opera
or theatre to watch for a new light in your face, to see your world
written in a smile. You are dark, and winning, and strong. You are pagan
in your love of sensuous, full things. You are grateful to the biting air
as it touches your cheek and sends the blood leaping in glad life. You
love water and fire and wind, elemental things, and you love them with
fervor and passion. All this to the world! Much more intimate to me, who
can read the letters you scrawl for the impudent, careless world. For deep
down in the core of that rose there lies a soul that permeates it all--a
longing, restless soul, one moment revealing a heaven that the next is
shut out in dark despair.

Yes, keep the cottage by the sea for one more dream. Perchance I shall
find something stable, eternal, something better than discontent and
striving; for the sea is great and makes peace.