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[[Handwritten 76]]

Waco

I wrote Sam that I was going south, so he stopped via Chicago, on his way home to Minneapolis for Xmas. We had two wonderful days of visiting, after Sam had asked me to marry him. He was sure in his mind/ [[that he loved me,]] but thought I [[(as well as Buddie)]] had better go south for six months until I was in better health and had leveled out from things. (I had no emotions, feeling that my body was encased in cement. The doctor told me to let myself cry, but I never felt that I could cry. I had ceased asking "Why," of things, heard people remark about my still being able to smile and laugh, sometimes said admiringly, sometimes as if to infer I couldn't have cared much. I just thought/ [[a little harder]] how George would like me to act, and only I knew the hours and hours I laid awake at night...lost). 
Sam loved me enough to want me fairly, or not at all. He told me about his heart trouble; the/ [[heart breaking]] attempts to enlist in active War Service; the impossibility of getting insurance, of having any security to offer me; that it seemed awful by conventional standards to speak to me so soon; [[but]] that he had loved me in an un-covetous way ever since he had seen me in Lorain; that [["]] aviation had nothing to offer a woman but heart ache, suffering, suspense, not even three/ [[sure]] meals a day; that I should marry some nice young millionaire and live happily ever after; that I was Cinderella, and, (warming to his theme) by God he would make aviation pay within the next six months, before he married me,and wasn't that a lot of crust/ [[to say that,]] or could he hope? [["]]
From then on, I was Cinderella/ [[or Mrs. Waco]] for he didn't like my name any better than anyone else, ever had. 
Buddie and I left for Winston-Salem to live with my brother and family. Buddie improved rapidly in that wonderful ozone, but I had times when to keep living took more than I/ [[felt I]] had. The unshed tears finally broke through the walls, leaving me ill a while, but pulled forward by Sam's wonderful letters. Humor, pathos, ambition, philosophy, enthusiasm all in dynamic sweep.