Athalie

"Your reply to my last letter has thoroughly incensed me.

"You always have been selfish. From the time I had the

misfortune to marry you I had to suffer from your selfish,

self-centred, demonstrative, and rather common

character--until you finally learned that demonstration is

offensive to decent breeding, and that, although I happened

to be married to you, I intended to keep to my own notions

of delicacy, reserve, privacy, and self-respect.

"Of course you thought it a sufficient reason for us to have

children merely because you once thought you wanted them;

and I shall not forget what was your brutal attitude toward

me when I told you very plainly that I refused to be saddled

with the nasty, grubby little brats. Evidently you are

incapable of understanding any woman who is not half animal.

"I did not desire children, and that ought to have been

sufficient for you. I am not demonstrative toward anybody; I

leave that custom to my servants. And is it any crime if the

things that interest and appeal to you do not happen to

attract me?

"And I'll tell you now that your subjects of conversation

always bored me. I make no pretences; I frankly do not care

for what you so smugly designate as 'the things of the mind'

and 'things worth while.' I am no hypocrite: I like well

bred, well dressed people; I like what they do and say and

think. Their characters may be negative as you say, but

their poise and freedom from demonstration are most

agreeable to me.

"You politely designated them as fools, and what they said

you characterised as piffle. You had the exceedingly bad

taste to sneer at various members of an ancient and

established aristocracy--people who by inheritance from

generations of social authority, require no toleration from

such a man as you.

"These are the people who are my friends; among whom I enjoy

an established position. This position you now threaten by

coolly going into business in New York. In other and uglier

words you advertise to the world that you have abandoned

your home and wife.

"Of course I cannot help it if you insist on doing this

common and disgraceful thing.

"And I suppose, considering the reigning family's attitude

toward divorce, that you believe me to be at your mercy.

"Permit me to inform you that I am not. If, in a certain

set, wherein I now have the entree, divorce is not

tolerated,--at any rate where the divorced wife of an

American would not be received,--nevertheless there are

other sets as desirable, perhaps even more desirable, and

which enjoy a prestige as weighty.