Galgenberg, Dec. 16th.
Dear Mr. Anstruther,—I don't quite understand. Purely motherly, I should say. Perhaps our notions of the exact meaning of the word friend are different. I include in it a motherly and sisterly interest in bodily well-being, in dry socks, warm feet, regular meals. I do not like my friend to be out on a bitter night, to take a tiring journey, to be disappointed. My friend's mother would have, I imagine, precisely the same feeling. My friend should not, then, mistake mere motherliness for other and less comfortable sentiments. But I am busy today, and have no time to puzzle out your letter. It must have been the outcome of a rather strange mood.
Yours sincerely,
ROSE-MARIE SCHMIDT.
Tell me more about your daily life in Berlin, the people you see, the houses you go to, the attitude, kind or otherwise, of your chief. Tell me these things, instead of swamping me with subtleties of sentiment. I don't understand subtleties, and I fear and despise sentiment as a certain spoiler of plain bread-and-butter happiness. There should be no sentiment between friends. The moment there is they leave off being just friends; and is not that what we both most want to be?