Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/209



IDELIA wrote in her diary, upon the second morning after their return to Chicago:

"We've been married eleven days and nothing wrong has happened. Nothing at all! David just gets more and more wonderful with me every day. There's nothing like having character in a man you're married to; it counts in so many ways. It makes a man think about the girl . . . but it keeps him thinking about other people, too.

"Now S" [invariably Fidelia referred to "S" by initial only in this volume of her diary; but she always wrote David's name] "was about as different as a man could be. He didn't think about me. He didn't! Of course, if he wasn't thinking about me, then he wasn't thinking about any other girl, either. He was just having his way. David's fine to me. He keeps me right in his mind.

"He keeps Alice, too. He doesn't want her instead of me; Maybe he might, if I was afraid he might and if I didn't mention her and want him to. . . . I want him to see her, too.

"I like his thinking about her. I do. I like his thinking about his father and mother. He hasn't seen Alice or heard from her in any way; but his father and mother both wrote him yesterday; I mean, he got the letter yesterday at his office. It had been waiting for him about a week. I've seen the envelope; he wouldn't show me what his father said nor all his mother said.

"I don't think she said what she wanted to, quite; for her letter came enclosed with his; but she said "Bring my new daughter to me, my son, so I may love her."