Read an Excerpt
Dear Dolly,
You would probably throw a terribly passionate fit if you read this letter before I go away, but I shall see that you do not. . . . So I am writing to tell you that I missed you, missed your talk, and your nagging, and your dear old fat warm self in bed, and your coaxing for kisses, and your worship of this poor piece of clay. . . .
So I am telling you that I have learned to love you in a different way. You fill, or about fill my life. . . . But I am concerned about a name, about a picture, and those things which before marriage did not bother me. . . . .
Well, then say I love you in my own way. That I delight to tease you, torture you, be indifferent to you, keep you always mine, far from other people, and hurt you terribly. Say that I miss you, that I am lost without you, that I rely on you, that I think you ought to watch me flirt with a woman and laugh, that you must be sweet, clean, good, loving always, that you are apart from other women because you’re mine, that I made you so, like the sculptor who made a statue, and when the time came touched it to life, and gave up himself.
