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Dear Enemy

Page 108

I suppose most old-fashioned, orthodox people would think it awful to

break up a marriage on such innocent grounds. It seemed so to me at

first; but as she went on piling up detail on detail each trivial in

itself, but making a mountainous total, I agreed with Helen that it was

awful to keep it going. It wasn't really a marriage; it was a mistake.

So one morning at breakfast, when the subject of what they should do for

the summer came up, she said quite casually that she thought she would

go West and get a residence in some State where you could get a divorce

for a respectable cause; and for the first time in months he agreed with

her.

You can imagine the outraged feelings of her Victorian family. In all

the seven generations of their sojourn in America they have never had

anything like this to record in the family Bible. It all comes from

sending her to college and letting her read such dreadful modern people

as Ellen Key and Bernard Shaw.

"If he had only got drunk and dragged me about by the hair," Helen

wailed, "it would have been legitimate; but because we didn't actually

throw things at each other, no one could see any reason for a divorce."

The pathetic part of the whole business is that both she and Henry were

admirably fitted to make some one else happy. They just simply didn't

match each other; and when two people don't match, all the ceremonies in

the world can't marry them.

Saturday morning.

I meant to get this letter off two days ago; and here I am with volumes

written, but nothing mailed.

We've just had one of those miserable deceiving nights--cold and frosty

when you go to bed, and warm and lifeless when you wake in the dark,

smothered under a mountain of blankets. By the time I had removed my own

extra covers and plumped up my pillow and settled comfortably, I thought

of those fourteen bundled-up babies in the fresh-air nursery. Their

so-called night nurse sleeps like a top the whole night through. (Her

name is next on the list to be expunged.) So I roused myself again, and

made a little blanket removing tour, and by the time I had finished I

was forever awake. It is not often that I pass a NUIT BLANCHE; but when

I do, I settle world problems. Isn't it funny how much keener your mind

is when you are lying awake in the dark?

I began thinking about Helen Brooks, and I planned her whole life over

again. I don't know why her miserable story has taken such a hold over

me. It's a disheartening subject for an engaged girl to contemplate.

I keep saying to myself, what if Gordon and I, when we really get

acquainted, should change our minds about liking each other? The fear

grips my heart and wrings it dry. But I am marrying him for no reason in

the world except affection. I'm not particularly ambitious. Neither his

position nor his money ever tempted me in the least. And certainly I am

not doing it to find my life work, for in order to marry I am having

to give up the work that I love. I really do love this work. I go about

planning and planning their baby futures, feeling that I'm constructing

the nation. Whatever becomes of me in after life, I am sure I'll be

the more capable for having had this tremendous experience. And it IS a

tremendous experience, the nearness to humanity that an asylum brings.

I am learning so many new things every day that when each Saturday night

comes I look back on the Sallie of last Saturday night, amazed at her

ignorance.

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