over the past and regret now his own inability to do the thing he planned—to have her for his own—is futile and does not help a whit. Nor will it do Elizabeth Ann any good for me to simply sit down now and make my life one long lamentation, or indulge in sad retrospection, no matter how deeply I feel or suffer. One thing I remember so well I've heard dozens of times from her father was, "Remember, no recriminations, dearie, ever!" And I feel as free today from them as I did when he smiled and shook his finger at me.
There is a thing I must say: I would not for a moment even try to convince Mr. Votaw of something he deliberately wished to discredit. But if you both will but look at the expressions on Elizabeth Ann's face in these snapshots, there certainly cannot remain the vestige of a doubt in your minds as to whom she belongs. (By the way, will you please keep these safely or send them back—the one with the typewritten word was sent to her father in 1921 and returned to me and I prize all very highly.) Even when a mere baby she was he all over. But it is not my idea to prove what could so irrefutably be proven, but which I would not dream of bothering to prove to anyone in this world. I come of a family which was, if nothing else, at least reasonably truthful—and if that were not enough, I can tell you truly that there existed no man in the world in those glorious days of 1917 who could have so completely possessed me out of marriage. For, after all, my mother is perhaps as conventional as any woman in the world and I was brought up to think just as most people think about conventions.
Furthermore, my mother, on the other hand, feels just as strongly resentful as you, and her feeling is that I was incapable of judging right from wrong when appealed to by a man thirty years my senior and with whom I had been in love since a mere child—and she may feel this way about it all her life, no matter whether I attempt to convince her that I knew exactly what I was doing and did it of my very own free will and accord. So you see you are not alone in your resentment. And, after his death, it was my really innate desire to be conventional which led to the very unfortunate and unhappy marriage I am now trying to put behind me. To be conventional and to have Elizabeth Ann in a conventional way! A hopeless mess I made of it, didn't I? Which has proven to me that if I would do the right thing for Elizabeth Ann I would not try to cut corners again.
Miss Harding's letter also contained an allusion to my having been indiscreetly confiding with my affairs. I will admit that I told Captain Neilsen about Elizabeth Ann and about her father—but when one marries there are few things one keeps from one's husband—and the very fact that Mrs. Votaw confided the story, told her by her sister, to her husband bears me out in this, does it not? Moreover, so far as Mr. G. is concerned, it is