That is wise and well, since you found her to be broad and sensible enough to share such a confidence.  But had she seen your written words to me and my reply, it would have been less agreeable to her than to hear your own calm recital of the now dead passion.

Words written in a state of high-wrought intensity retain a sort of phosphoric luminosity, like certain decaying substances, and even after the passage of years, and when the emotions which gave them expression are dead and for-gotten, they seem to emit life and feeling.

Burn your bridges as you walk along the highways of romance to St. Benedict’s land.

Since you compliment me by saying I have helped you to higher ideals of life, will you allow me to give you a little advice regarding your treatment of your wife?

You have every reason to know that I have been a happy and well-loved wife of the man of my choice.  You know that I have neither sought nor accepted the attentions of other men when they crossed the danger-line lying between friendship and love.

Therefore it may astonish you when I confess that, at the time you temporarily lost your head, I was conscious of an undercurrent of feminine vanity at the thought that I was capable of inspiring a young and talented man with so sincere a feeling.

A similar experience with an older man would have suggested an insult, since older men understand human nature, and realize what a flirtation with a married woman means.  But your ingenuousness, and your romantic, boyish temperament, were, in a measure, an excuse for your folly, and made me lenient toward you.

My happy life, my principles and ideals, submerged this sentiment of feminine vanity to which I confess, but I knew it was there, and it led me to much meditation, then and ever since, upon the matter of woman’s weakness and folly.

As never before, I was able to understand how a neglected or misused wife might mistake this very sentiment of flattered vanity for the recognition of an affinity.

Had I been suffering from coldness and indifference at home, how acceptable your boyish devotion might have proved to me.

And how easily I would have been persuaded by your blind reasoning that we were intended by an all-wise Providence for life companions.

There is no sin a woman so readily forgives as a man’s unruly love for her, and hundreds of noble-hearted women have been led to regard a lawless infatuation as a divine emotion, because they were lonely, and neglected, and hungry for affection.

See to it, my dear friend, as the years go by, that your wife needs no romance from the outside world to embellish her life with sentiment.

Do not drop into the humdrum ways of many contented husbands, and forget to pay the compliment, and cease to act the lover.

Notice the gowns and hats your wife wears, and share her pleasures and interests when it is possible.