I have to ask him to keep his hat on. And a man's wig disgusts me even more than a bald pate. Three months ago we stopped living together. I could no longer put up with his all the time scolding and cursing me, and spitting tobacco juice and vomit on the rugs. While we see each other now and again—because he wants a few yellow backs—we have come to hate the very sight of one another.
Ralphie, I heartily wish I were forever rid of the brute beast! It now comes hard, when I see nothing of the hero in him, to fork over a roll of bills every few days. Our relations the past year have been hardly more than a case of blackmail. I do not wholly drop him for fear of his telling abroad how I pass now as a man and now as a woman.
Most of all I want to get out of George's clutches because five months ago I met a wonderful young fellow whom I plan legally to adopt. When I took George Greenwood, I planned the same thing. But his character proved so terrible! I am now getting on in life, mon cheri, and my health is delicate. I need a close intimate in my home to wait on me during my many sick days. It is difficult for any of us hermaphroditoi to take a wife. One hates so to explain to a woman that after marriage, the life must be that of brother and sister. And no woman—excepting only the most old-maidish—would marry under these conditions. But I know one of us hermaphroditoi—before your time, Ralphie—who did marry, after thirty, under that arrangement, and only because he had political ambitions, and his being known as a married man would give pause to enemies who were backbiting him because of the indiscretions of his youth. This her-
