Dart begins: “A couple of nice letters were here when I awoke this morning. It’s raining outside, but my window’s open a little and the rain smells like spring for sure. Gosh how I miss you. This is the kind of air I’d like to be breathing through your hair. We’d be taking big, deep breaths, feeling each other’s chests expanding and contracting as we lay close together, holding tightly. …Oh, if we could only begin now, to be together always, in all ways, how happy we’d be!”
He muses at length about the rightness or wrongness of their abstinence. To give into their desires would seem wrong to both of them because they’ve been raised to believe it’s so. But since their desire springs from love, can it be wrong? He confesses to the fact that he’s beginning to doubt the teachings of their childhoods.
Couldn’t it be true that they, who love each other so much, who want each other constantly, have a right to each other? When they repeated vows to each other so many months ago, in private, they meant them. “We mean them in our passion, and we mean them when sexual excitement is farthest from our minds, and we mean them even when our love leads to misunderstandings bordering almost on hatred. What more right can two people have to the most sacred thing two people can share?”
Suddenly, Dart refers to Ralph Waldo Emerson and his idea that the private thoughts and actions of an individual are not all that significant in the grand scheme of things. Emerson likens individual actions to the individual waves in the oceans – at the mercy of winds and tides. What really counts is the ebb and flow of the entire ocean, the drift and currents of society as a whole.
Dart explained about an experience he had last week when several students stayed after American lit class to speak with Mr. Carter. At that time, the professor warned the students against trying to teach their wives anything that they had learned from reading great literature. Carter confessed that in trying to teach his wife, he fell more into the role of teacher and sacrificed his role as a husband. Dart believes that the problem with Carter is he believes no one is a better thinker or teacher than himself. His failure was in trying to teach his wife, rather than share ideas and thoughts with her. Dart brings this up now because he fears this letter is beginning to sound like one of those that will “awe” Dot, scare her, a little. That’s the last thing he wants! “I certainly don’t want to awe you with any display of knowledge, for the Lord knows I haven’t enough to run my own life smoothly, let alone try to influence another’s. But if I don’t share my thoughts with you, I share them with no one. If I can’t share them with you, they’re worthless.”
He says the last thing he ever wants to do is to beat Dot around the ears with the blunt stump of his thinking until she is black and blue with his over-zealousness.
Returning to Emerson’s thoughts about individuals’ occasional actions that stray from their beliefs, Dart feels that the general drift or current of their own lives is good and positive. Therefore, they shouldn’t berate themselves, or feel too much guilt after those times when they strayed a bit.
Although he goes on for several pages, using poetic language and lovely phrasing, that’s the gist of this entire letter. Having made the case that they have not been wrong to express their desire through occasional minor experimentation, he then re-reads the letter he’s just written. In the margins, he writes notes to indicate that he now considers them to behaved correctly in sticking to the beliefs taught to them as children.
He notices that she’s avoided answering his “scolding” letter of a few days ago. (I think he should count his blessings on that score!) He claims he doesn’t want to be the type of man who would presume to scold anyone, yet he finds himself doing it too often, usually when it’s none of his business. Still, isn’t being concerned about his wife’s happiness his business, he asks.
He and Homer went to see “Sinbad the Sailor” tonight. it wasn’t a great movie, but it was extravagant. He hopes she and her friend Cynthia will have a chance to spend a little time together soon. When Dot writes of taking a hot bath and going to bed, it makes Dart nearly wild with imagination. How he’d like to bathe her and take her to bed,sweet-smelling and squeaky clean, without the bother of pajamas. As you might guess, this line of thought continues for another line or two…
This letter has taken him more than two and a half hours to write, and he must get some sleep. He’ll return tomorrow, and I’m happy to say, so will Dot! After an absence of many months, we have new letters from the other half of our pair, beginning tomorrow. See you then.