ving for you the things you had thought you saw. I don't know
why I did that--desperate, I suppose, because it was all spoiled, frantic
because I was helpless to keep it from being spoiled. And then I said
things to _you_--that must show--And yet, Katie, as long as I'm trying to
be honest I've got to say again, though all differently, that I was
surprised--shocked, I suppose, at something in the way you looked. It's
just a part of your world that I don't understand. It's as I told
you--we've lived in different worlds. Things--some things--that seem all
right in yours--well, it's just surprising that you should think them all
right. In your world the way you do things seems to matter so much more
than what you do.

"I've gone, Katie, and as far as I'm concerned it's what has to be. You
see you couldn't fit me in. The only thing I can do for you now is
to--stay gone. You'll feel badly--oh, I know that--but in the end it
won't be as bad as trying to fit me in, trying to keep it up. And I can't
have you doing things for me in another way--as you'd want
to--because--it's hard to explain just what I mean, but after I've been
Ann I couldn't be just somebody you were helping. It meant too much to me
to be Ann to become just a girl you're good to.

"What I'd rather do--want this letter to do--is keep for you that idea of
Ann--memory of her.

"So that's why I want to tell you about some things that really were Ann.
I haven't any more right to you, but I want you to know you have some
right to her.

"I told you that I was standing on the corner, and that he asked me to
get in the automobile, and that I did, and that that--began it. It was
true. It was one way to put it. I'll try and put it another way.

"It isn't even fair to him, putting it that way. You know, of course,
that he's not in the habit of asking girls on corners to go with him. I
think--there at the first--he was sorry for me. I think it was what you
would call an impulse and that being sorry for me had more to do with it
than anything else.

"And I know I wasn't fair to myself when I put it that way; and you
weren't fair to me when you called it common and low. That's what I want
to try and show you--that it wasn't that.

"It was in the warm weather. It had been a hot, hard day. Oh they were
all hot, hard days. I didn't feel well. I made mistakes. I was scolded
for it. I quarreled with one of the girls about washing my hands! She
said she was there before I w