Dart’s mood from yesterday persists. He’s swamped with regular school work plus impending tests to study for, but tonight, he decides to pen a 13-page letter to Dot instead.
Judging from her response to his steamy letter from last week, he fears he went too far. He had misgivings about sending that letter, but he had something to say, and he said it. It has made Dot worry that they may have crossed one too many boundaries on her last night in Cleveland. He occasionally shares her concern, but mostly only when she second guesses their activities. He has heard from several married men that there will probably be times after their wedding when they second guess their decision to marry, but that passes as the couple works through the misunderstandings that brought them to the state of questioning.
He reasons that their intense love for each other drives their need to get “better acquainted, which in turn increases their desire for each other. He feels strongly that if they were living, unmarried, in the same city, one of two things would happen. They would either cross the line that neither of them wants to cross prior to marriage, or they would control themselves to the point of controlling the love right out of things.
As he thinks about their wedding night, he believes that the steps they’ve taken to “get to know each other” have served several valuable purposes. First, they have taught each of them so much about giving and receiving pleasure. Secondly, they have acted as a sort of steam valve, relieving the pressure that, if allowed to continue, could ruin the long-anticipated wedding night because of nerves and stress. Being newly married is bound to be an emotional strain, and if they had to start from square one in consummating the marriage, they would surely crack under the pressure.
Oh, for heaven’s sake! These are two adults, very much in love. I think the fact that they haven’t jumped each other’s bones in a fit of passion shows remarkable restraint.
Dart finally boils it down to this: Neither of them is either wholly angelic, nor wholly diabolic. There are advantages and disadvantages to the closeness they have experienced, and perhaps they’ll have it all figured out by their 50th wedding anniversary. If they’re lucky, they’ll have it figured out in time to be completely frank with their own children.
“Even though we are miles and months apart, I feel as though I both own you and belong to you. You are the half of me that’s not here. I’m the half of you that you gave to me when we exchanged our love. We can bring those half-people together, and by patience and work, we can build two complete people out of the pieces. Those two people won’t be Dot or Dart, but Dot and Dart. If we work long and hard enough at it, Dot and Dart will be so mixed up with each other that they can’t be separated. It’s partly that way now.”
He tells her that one of the things he loved most about her letter today was that she said she wants to turn to him first when she has troubles. “Oh Dot, you’re the sweetest, finest girl a fellow could ever have. You scare me sometimes.”
Yes, he agrees that they should talk about kids. He wants them, and he knows she wants them very badly. He’d feel their marriage might be a mistake if he were unable to give her children, but she knows of his “dark shadow.” (He fears he may have lost his fertility with his bout of mumps while in the navy hospital.) He strongly believes that if either of them proves incapable of having children, then they should waste no time in adopting. “If we can’t have children of our own, our marriage can’t be a mistake if we give love and tenderness and good lives to children whose lives would be without them, otherwise.”
“Oh, how can I soften what I said? Please let’s have children. Ours, if God wills it, others’, if He wills we be their caretakers.”