Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/40

you. It is that I do not wish to love any man—not any man. Pray consider this as final. You can be so agreeable when you are not troublesome.

"Dear Friend: Now you are quite reasonable and possible. I never had any objections to your friendship; it was you who objected to mine. Since you are willing to meet me on that basis at last, I find you interesting and valuable to me; and I am perfectly willing to write to you in this way once in a while, since you wish it, though I prefer to mail anything I may feel like saying to your address. I was sorry the day I left a note in the second volume of 'Rufus Choate', and I would rather you did not send things by Maggie. There 's something about it I don't just like. I never allowed my heroine to do it in the novel I wrote. You never knew I wrote a novel, did you? I never told anybody before. It is because we are friends that I tell you. That is my idea of a friend—somebody you can say things to. I am mistaken in you if you ask me why I never published it. That 's one thing I like about you—you are not stupid. You are one of the people who understand; and there are not enough of them to go round, you know. I never knew but one person who understood—