December 14, 1908 KITEBROOK,
MORETON-IN-MARSH.
Dear Robin,
I can hardly believe the letter [Robin–November 25, 1908] which I got from you this morning. It seems to contradict so absolutely all that I imagined you to be. I trusted you so entirely and I believed you always when you told me I was the only girl you had ever cared for or had even kissed and it wasn’t true. Why didn’t you tell me of her before? Even if you were “only friends” you have told me of so many of your friends. I am glad you have told me now, it is better now than later, but I simply don’t know how to answer. I don’t seem able to think at all but I feel I must write at once as you will want to know. My reason and my common-sense all tell me to say “no”, but I can’t, I love you too much; and though I feel as though I should never be able to look my friends in the face again if I married you knowing this, I simply have not the strength to give you up.
Oh, say it isn’t true, Robin, what your letter seems to mean. I don’t quite understand you. First you say that all the things people are saying are not true, and if that is so why should we worry about them at all? Then you say that the friendship has ended “disastrously“. You can’t mean both, Robin, and it seems to me that the right one decides it all. If the girl has any claim on you, I can have none, and you must do what is right for her. It is terribly hard for me to say it, but you will understand it is the only thing I can say.
I wrote you a long letter yesterday but I have torn it up now. I don’t seem to have any right to send it and I don’t think I’ll write to you any more till I get some answer to this and I pray God that you will be able to repeat that the things that are said are not true. I want your word that you owe nothing to that girl and there you know my answer. I cannot cable as you ask, for it is the girl, not I, who must be considered first.
If you are just afraid that I shall mind what people say when I come out, don’t let that worry you, for if I have your word that it is all right I don’t care a straw for other people; but if I have anything to forgive, dear, I do forgive it most utterly, for I care too much to be angry. I am only intensely sorry for us all–for you, for myself, and for her. I shall wait very anxiously for your letter, it just means everything to me.
I trust you, dear, to do what is right for us all; and if it has to be good-bye then goodbye, darling, and think sometimes of a girl who cares for you above all else.
Kathleen