I am humiliated by your words, your actions, your very being. I have defended you! Risked my own reputation to extend the hand of friendship because I believed that you sincerely wished to be my friend. Instead I find that I was to be one of your many conquests and thought of as lightly as they.
I believed that you at least respected me and my good name. I ignored the wise counsel of friends and others. What a fool I have been.
You dare to write to me of love? You who have so often scorned it in my presence? Let us make it clear, I cannot now believe anything you say, or have said in the past. And if by some strange madness your sentiments are true, know that they offend me; your speaking them is an outrage to me. The continuation of our supposed friendship is impossible. I believe that I have the right to request your silence both to me and to any other that you would take into your confidence.
I ask you to return this letter to me after you have read it. You will see that I have returned yours. I would that no trace remain of an incident that ought never to have occurred.
John
