trim and stimulate and refine a woman in that hothouse atmosphere--at
least _if she's a healthy woman_. She's too apt sometime to break her
gait, get the bit of tradition between her teeth, and then let her
impulses run away with her.

Oh, Muetterchen, I am so sick and sore, and yet filled with a strange
new zest for this old puzzle of life. Will I ever be the same again?
This man is going to ask me to marry him the moment I am ready for him
to. Shall I be kind enough to tell him no, or shall I steel myself to
go in and hurt him--_make him writhe?_

And yet do you know what he gave me while I was with him? I wonder if
women feel it commonly? It was a desire for _motherhood_--a curiously
vivid and very definite longing--entirely irrespective of him, you
understand, although he inspired it. Without loving him or being at all
moved toward him, he made me sheerly _want_ to be a mother! Or is it
only that men we don't love make us feel motherly?

Am I wholly irrational and selfish and bad, or what am I? I know you'll
love me, whatever it is, and I wish now I could snuggle on that soft,
cushiony shoulder of yours and go to sleep.

Can anything be more pitiful than "a fine old family" afflicted with
_dry-rot_ like ours? I'm always amused when I read about the suffering
in the tenements. The real anguish is up in the homes like ours. We
have _to do without so very many more things,_ and mere hunger and cold
are easy compared to the suffering we feel.

Perhaps when I'm back to that struggle for appearances, I'll relent and
"barter my charms" as the old novels used to say, sanely and decently