The Same to the Same
June 6th, 1929
Petra, my darling, my dear, dear man darling,
Oh, my dearest, isn’t it terrible to see the summer coming, and to feel so wintry and lonely. Your letters have been a help, but what wouldn’t I give for you yourself, the real you!
You will tell me again that I’m not telling the truth. That I don’t really love you because I won’t give up being conventional and respectable and go away with you, but it isn’t that, Petra darling. You think in your dear, impetuous way that it would all be so easy, but it wouldn’t really, darling. You think that because you are a man, and you don’t consider how awful it would be, day after day, all the sordidness and trouble. It wouldn’t really be fair to make you go through all that. Even if He would let me go—which, of course, he wouldn’t, because he is so selfish—it would be a long, drawn-out misery. I know how horrid it is because I know a woman who got her divorce. Of course, her husband took all the blame, but it was a miserable time for everybody, and she and her man friend had to go right away, and he gave up his post, a very good post, and they are living in quite a slummy little place in rooms, and don’t even get enough to eat sometimes.
Anyway, the Gorgon would never consent to me divorcing him, because he prides himself on being very virtuous and proper, and he would probably have to leave his firm or something. He would never do that. He thinks more of his firm than of anything in the world—far more than he does of me or my happiness, which he has never considered at all from the day he married me.