I don't want to come East until I am over that, you know. . .
Suppose I never get over it? Well, Carley, you can free yourself from
me by one word that I could never utter. I could never break our
engagement. During the hell I went through in the war my attachment to you
saved me from moral ruin, if it did not from perfect honor and fidelity.
This is another thing I despair of making you understand. And in the chaos
I've wandered through since the war my love for you was my only anchor. You
never guessed, did you, that I lived on your letters until I got well. And
now the fact that I might get along without them is no discredit to their
charm or to you.
It is all so hard to put in words, Carley. To lie down with death and get
up with death was nothing. To face one's degradation was nothing. But to
come home an incomprehensibly changed man--and to see my old life as
strange as if it were the new life of another planet--to try to slip into
the old groove--well, no words of mine can tell you how utterly impossible
it was.
My old job was not open to me, even if I had been able to work. The
government that I fought for left me to starve, or to die of my maladies
like a dog, for all it cared.
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