Horn of my own life. I entered upon my engagement to Gordon
honestly and hopefully, but little by little I've grown doubtful
of the outcome. The girl he loves is not the ME I want to be.
It's the ME I've been trying to grow away from all this last
year. I'm not sure she ever really existed. Gordon just
imagined she did. Anyway, she doesn't exist any more, and the
only fair course both to him and to myself was to end it.

We no longer have any interests in common; we are not
friends. He doesn't comprehend it; he thinks that I am making it
up, that all I have to do is to take an interest in his life, and
everything will turn out happily. Of course I do take an
interest when he's with me. I talk about the things he wants to
talk about, and he doesn't know that there's a whole part of me--
the biggest part of me--that simply doesn't meet him at any
point. I pretend when I am with him. I am not myself, and if we
were to live together in constant daily intercourse, I'd have to
keep on pretending all my life. He wants me to watch his face
and smile when he smiles and frown when he frowns. He can't
realize that I'm an individual just as much as he is.

I have social accomplishments. I dress well, I'm
spectacular, I would be an ideal hostess in a politician's
household--and that's why he likes me.

Anyway, I suddenly saw with awful distinctness that if I kept
on I'd be in a few years where Helen Brooks is. She's a far
better model of married life for me to contemplate just this
moment than you, dear Judy. I think that such a spectacle as you
and Jervis is a menace to society. You look so happy and