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150.
Sunday Afternoon. July 13, 1919.
My Dear ---
What do I care whether my lover merely thinks he loves me, and suggests that he may "exhibit at the crucial moment (of saying "I will") a certain maidenly hesitancy so to speak, and the fatal words may be postponed" --- I am quoting you exactly --- what care I? Like the proverbial wife with the black eye, the more my husband beats me the more I love him. That
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may not be exactly true. I at least don't love you because of the beatings, but I seem to in spite of them. So I can't obey you when you command me not to love you anymore. I'm sorry, but I can't help it I realize that according to all authorities no woman should ever allow her lover to be sure of her love if she wishes to keep his; here again I fail. I am George Washington's descendant, to my own grief.
I came home from L.A. today and found two letters which lightened the atmosphere considerably for me. One was written June 10th, one June 13th I can't and won't tell you how horribly miserable I have been inside about your other letter -- until today. When I awoke this morning, I knew it was all right. And then I came home and found your letters. Don't feel badly that you wrote what you did. If you felt that way, you are not to blame for expressing it. Only, there were fourteen days for me between the receiving of your June 9th and June 10th letters. And my dear, once and for all, understand
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that you are abso-very-lutely Free to do whatever you damn please in regard to me. If you feel that in the tiniest, most infinitesimal way your marriage with me will ever limit you or keep you from doing the things you long to do, for the love of me, don't marry me!! Because the instant I found it out, I would run away and get a di-vorce! And as for all my written dreams of having a minister waiting for you as you step off the boat -- regard them as bubbles to be broken, if you choose. I at least promise you
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this: all future arrangements of any sort about said minister or mayhap J.P. are entirely up to you from now on. I shall never give you another chance of accusing me of wishing to rush you to the altar willy-nilly.
I do understand pretty well, I feel, the changes taking, and which have taken, place in you on the other side. At least I understand far better than I would have, had I never been a Reconstruction Aide in Physical Therapy. I know that my tolerance of the failings of the male sex has