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Jan. 30, 1918. New Address734 Bush St. Apt 27
My Dearest--
Do you remember, years ago, when your religion was a very simple thing and God was a very concrete and near person, how you felt one day when you saw a great and living proof of His love for you? Do you remember the holy joy and exaltation you felt? If you remember you will understand my feeling after I read your letter of January 1st. It made me want to kneel down and kiss your feet. You have given me a love that is so near divine as any human love can be, and I feel exalted and humbled by it. I wonder how you came to love little me in such a fashion--little sentimentalist with a mind's picture of a tall, black-eyed matinee idol sort of a man for her lover? I look back
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at the infinite patience and understanding you have had for me and I wonder how your love can stand so many jars. And you--you [who] have given me a new world, a world that is so much bigger and nobler than the little petty world I lived in, how can I ever thank you? I hope, when my life [here] is over, I will have thanked you with years of true companionship thru all the troubles and joys you will find there, with sympathy and under standing and a love that has grown to be as selfless as your mother's. My love is still selfish now, for I am still selfish and petty and trivial except when you lift me up with you or when I find my salvation in helping my boys. But I know I am growing, and with your help, who knows what I may become? Only in the process, I am going to hurt you many hundreds of times all unwittingly, just as I have already done, and you will always forgive me the hurt and look to the time when I will have clearer vision. I can look back now and see the hundreds of foolish and
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selfish things I have done to you and which must have hurt you, yet you never let me know.
Just one tiny thing about your wonderful letter gave me a foolish little pain. Dear Heart, nothing you can ever say to me is more wonderful than "I love you." I would never ask you to embellish [that?] and would be content for you to play the man who could say only that. But Dear, sometimes my faith in myself is not very strong, and I begin to think of all my failings, and I think of you whose viewpoint has undoubtedly widened and become more broad, and I wonder if you can still love me. And one of your notes comes, all about the glory of your work - and again I wonder. It's a lack of faith in me which often just a word or phrase will dissipate. It's foolish of me, I know, and when we are together, I shall never think of it again. But just
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once in while when you seem very very far from me, it troubles me.
And another thing in your letter which made me bless you. There are two things about you which always seemed most wonderful in your love - one was your understanding and the second was the freedom you have always given me. You have made me more truly your slave by giving me absolute freedom from any restraint your love had the right to lay on me than any master could have done with the buying of his negro in older times. I have thought of that so very, very often - you have never curtailed me in the tiniest way, and what I have given, I have given freely and happily. The first time you kissed me - I wanted you to kiss me, even though I fought very hard not to want you to. Oh Wynne I just can't express on paper - or with words either - how much I love you for that greatest of all unselfishness in your love for me, but I do want you to know that that is a chain which will rivet my soul to yours, paradoxical
