that Nan 'loves' me. (Do you really
want to be as Victorian as that, you slang-slinging young modern? But I
know! You think I mightn't catch on to your shibboleths and you borrow
what you judge to be mine, give me the choice of weapons, as it were.)
And you're a trump, Dick! Don't think I don't know that, and if I poke
fun at you it's to keep from slopping all over you with the Victorian
lavishness you'd expect. What did we ever fight for about your youth and
my age? Or wasn't it about that, after all? Was it really about--Nan?

"Well, when it comes to 'love', I do love Nan. There you have it, good
old-fashioned direct address. She is as immediate to me as my own skin
and veins. She always has been. She began to grow into me when she was
little, and she kept on growing. There are fibers and rootlets of Nan
all through me, and the funny part of it is I love to feel them there. I
can't remember being dominated by anybody without resenting it, wanting
to get away--escape! escape!--but I never for an instant have felt that
about Nan. She's the better part of me. Good Lord! she's the only part
of me I take any particular pleasure in or that I can conceive of as
existing after I join Old Crow. (Not that I'm allowed to take much
pleasure in her now. She sees me when I call, answers when I consult her
about the Fund--and she's been tremendously sympathetic and valuable
there--but she seems to feel and, I've no doubt, for very good reasons,
that we're better apart. She has, I believe, a theory about it; but we
needn't go into that. And I don't quarrel with it.)

"The queer part of it is that I feel Nan herself couldn't break the bond
between us, couldn't if she tried. It's as deep as nature, as actual as
Old Crow. I can give you a curious proof of it. I might be almost
swamped by somebody--yes, I mean Tira. I might as well say so as hear
you saying it over this letter--somebody that is beauty and mystery and
a thousand potencies that take hold on nature itself. But that doesn't
push Nan away by an inch. If I'm swamped, Nan's swamped with me. If I
mourn the beauty and the piteousness withdrawn, Nan mourns, too. It's
Nan and I against the world. But it isn't Nan and I with the world. The
world is against us. Do you see? For I'm a year older than when I saw
you last. And though many of the things you felt about the years weren't
true, a lot of 'em were, and they're a little truer now. And one of them
is that I've got to give Nan a