One woman at least I was beginning to "let alone", in that I was writing Bettie Hamlyn letters which grew shorter and shorter.... Her mother had fallen ill, not long after I left college; and she and Bettie were now a great way off, in Colorado, where the old lady was dying, with the most selfish sort of laziness about it, and so was involving me in endless correspondence.... At least, I wrote to Bettie punctually, if briefly, though I had not seen her since that night when the moon was red, and big, and very evil. I had to do it, because she had insisted that I write.
"But letters don't mean anything, Bettie. And besides, I hate writing letters."
"That is just why you must write to me regularly. You never do the things you don't want to do. I know it. But for me you always will, and that makes all the difference."
"Shylock!" I retorted.
"If you like. In any event, I mean to have my pound of flesh, and regularly."
So I wrote to Bettie Hamlyn on the seventh of every month--because that was her birthday,--and again on the twenty-third, because that was mine. The rest of my time I gave whole-heartedly to Stella....
