and salubrious flattery and of appreciation and praise for traits and gifts and qualities which I do not possess. They appeal and cater remarkably to my vanity—and are pleasant and unreal and vain and fatuous and fond and piquant.
He is a clever man and does not make love to me. A butcher's-boy may write love-letters—and I'd prefer those of a butcher's-boy to those of a business man: they would be more sincere and less hopelessly discreet. But this business man is discerning and intuitive and writes me no love. His wife—a business man always has a wife—could not rationally object to what is in the letters, though she would irrationally and naturally object to the letters themselves. She is unloving and unloved—they always are—but whatever may be her caste (I know only that she is tall and blonde and named Bertha) she doubtless would find something superfluous in the idea of her husband's letters to me.
A letter comes from him in Georgia after I have written him a brief disquieting one with a latent human appeal in it to make him think the chief thing I need in life is his appreciation, his attitude toward me, to brace my spirit. Then his comes, written in his small slanting commercial hand. It is arresting from any angle and well thought, well couched.
