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[to Gizella Pálos]
Vienna, July 31, 1916
IX., Berggasse 19
Dearest lady,
Today I got up from an influenza fever lasting two days, but I don't want to make you wait for a reply.1 So don't be surprised if my writing is rather shaky.
I was afraid that I was supposed to advise you, but no, you are merely asking me to answer a question as to whether you were right in wanting to wait for your daughter's return. And perhaps I can still make a judgment about that, i.e., not as to whether it is right or wrong but interpret, translate, what it wants to say.
Perhaps you are right, but it seems without a doubt that this suggestion means a “no.” Are you thinking of waiting a half or 3/4 year longer, after one has already waited such long years, and for what? For this same daughter, who has already placed herself between the both of you and will do this immediately again both by her own will and by the consent of both of you. Does that mean something other than hiding the no behind a postponement, which will perhaps lead to a new motivation for the no?
I am not unaware of the fact that you are simply propagating a role which your counterpart has, to your sorrow, conducted against you, and that such revenge is psychologically completely justified. Really, if both of you are so close to the “no,” I don't know whether you aren't doing the right thing with your refusal. Only you should know that it is a refusal.
After containing myself for years with regard to our friend, I have finally come forward with advice, because I believed in the meantime to have arrived