deplorable to be thirty-nine.

Good night,
MARIANNE.

December 20.

So near Xmas, dear, yet none of the Yule-tide joys float out to this
frozen wilderness. Snow, snow everywhere. The tall alders, whose vivid
coloring so inspired me when I arrived, are now black and gaunt, and the
pitiless desert wind comes tearing and howling from the north to bend
and crack their stiffened joints. I often wonder--am I any more the
arbiter of my fate than these lifeless snow-draped spectres around me.

Carlton left the hotel almost a week ago and took the room next to mine.
We are hopelessly in love with each other, and he wonders how he ever
could have thought of accepting happiness from Mrs. Claymore,
accompanied by so many freckles and a half million dollars.

As for Bern, dear, he will survive. I am much older than he is, so that
some day he would be forty with all his emotions and I would be fifty
with the rheumatism--it would never do. Henceforth I shall be prodigal
of negatives, except where Carlton is concerned.

We have attained the intimacy which thinks aloud, and instead of hating
Sioux Falls and longing for my sentence to expire, I am beginning to
worship every inch of the ground, and only pray that such an exile
should last forever.

None of the fulminating fires that I have heretofore known are
mine--only calm and peace and the joys born of a perfect understanding.
We have not let the moment slip when souls meet in comprehension. I
almost decided not to confide all this to you, but it slipped off my
pen and I'm not sorry, for no woman living was ever before blessed with
a friend like you. You and I have visited the lowest Dantesque circles
of despair together, and no confidence between us could amount to an
indiscretion.

Our landlady thinks that we are merely speaking acquaintances, and it is
best, as this new-found sympathy must not be distilled by Sioux Falls
scandal-mongers, though I should like to shout it from the house tops
through a megaphone, I am so happy and proud of it.

So you shot with Aldrich and he tried to get you to buy "Steel
Preferred." I am glad you did not invest and sorry you did not win the
cup. I shall never again shoot for pleasure. I am ashamed of my
trophies. Perhaps love has made me mushy but I don't regret it as hate
made me flinty. Have you noticed how our bonds have slumped--t