Again - only a small part of this letter remains
... I used to delight in being alone with her in the moonlight and listening to myself talking in the coolest of tones about impersonal subjects. After a bit her efforts became more determined and I thought it rather rotten of me to waste her time, so I told her first that I had resolved to chuck flirting, and when that didn't have the desired effect, that all my attention was concentrated elsewhere. That discouraged her a bit, but before she went she told me that she considered she had been very slow to let me get away with it.
When I said that before she arrived I was ?? I don't mean that I was afraid my thoughts would change [says me, trying, as per your last letter, to express it impersonally] but I thought that, the flesh being weak, I might drop into a flirtation just for amusement.
I didn't tell you about it in the letter just after they arrived because I didn't want you to be wondering every day if the resolution was still intact; and although I knew the resolution was safe, I didn't tell you in my next letter because I thought, or rather hoped, that you might ----- no, the rest you might consider personal.
I wouldn't even come near being personal but the whole story is about my resolution which has a "personal" origin. And you know you made me promise to tell you about my temptations.
When such a big one as that has turned out such an utter flop, I feel absolutely safe as houses. All the vamps in Europe in a combined effort would get nothing better than a scornful laugh out of me.
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