11/15/55

N.W. [Natica Waterbury]. She will make some desperate marriage at 38, perhaps, which won’t last, but if it lasts two years may give her (or her age will) that poise and confidence in her own special personality, which she so badly needs. She is so far superior to most in an intellectual and idealistic sense. She thinks and questions, and most of us do not, most of us live nearer to the animal level. It is this inquiring and this doubt (with consequent indecision) which I most admire in her and which will always make me love her. It is the big sine qua non of civilization, of the emergence of the human race from the more bestial organisms on earth. She can never be ignoble, whatever happens to her, however the buffetings of life force her to behave. She has that which Shakespeare meant when he compared men to angels.