Burned Bridges

And still I know that I am going to be very lonely, to feel for

awhile as if I'd lost something. I have felt that way these weeks

that you kept to your cabin, avoiding me. I have felt it more

keenly since your cabin is empty, and I don't know where you may

have gone, nor if you will ever come back. I find myself

wondering how you will fare in this grim country. You're such a

visionary. You're so impractical. And neither nature nor society

is kind to visionaries, to those who will not be adaptable.

Do you understand what I've been trying to tell you? I wonder if

you will? Or if I am too incoherent. I feel that perhaps I am. I

started out to say things that were bubbling within me, and I am

oddly reluctant to say them. I am like a butterfly emerging from

its cocoon. I am an explorer setting out upon a momentous

journey. I am making an experiment that fascinates me. Yet I have

regrets. I am uncertain. I am doing the thing which my nature and

my intelligence impel me to do, now that I have the opportunity.

I am satisfying a yearning, and stifling a desire that could grow

very strong if I let myself go.

I can see you scowl. You will say to yourself--looking at it from

your own peculiar angle--you will say: "She is not worth thinking

about." And unless I have been mistaken in you you will say it

very bitterly, and you will be thinking long and hard when you

say it. Just as I, knowing that I am wise in going away from you,

just as my reason points clearly to the fact that for me living

with you would become a daily protest, a limitation of thought

and act that I could not endure, still--knowing all this--I feel

a strange reluctance to accepting the road I have chosen, I feel

a disconcerting tug at my heart when I think of you--and that is

often.

I shall change, of course. So will you. Psychologically, love

doesn't endure to death--unless it is nurtured by association,

unless it has its foundation in community of interest and effort,

a mutual affection that can survive hard knocks.

Good-by, dear freckled man. You have taught me something. I hope

I have done as much for you. I'm sorry it couldn't be different.

But--a man must be able to stand on his own feet, eh? I leave you

to puzzle out what "standing on his own feet" means. Good-by.

Sophie.

P.S. Dad says that if you winter at Lone Moose and care to kill a

few of the long days you are welcome to help yourself to the

books he left. He will tell Cloudy Moon you are to have them all

if you want them, or any of them, any time.