What was Ima's "secret"?

     When Ima Hogg wanted something hidden, she was very good at concealment. In the archives in Austin, the 1908 diary she began while she was studying music in Berlin starts with “January 1.”  She wrote in it nearly every day--until the end of February. 

     

     She wrote about her music studies, the piano pieces she was working on--and about a young man named “Areal” whom she had met the summer before. He came to see her January 4, but, she wrote, “He is off to Heidelberg in the morning.” That was the end of him--as far as we know. The diary ends abruptly on February 28. The rest of the little leather-bound book (with a lock) is blank. There was no more need to lock it. 

     If the “secret” that Ima mentioned in a letter to her brother Tom in April 1908 was something she wanted to keep to herself, she did: From February to October 1908 I have yet to find any record of her.  We have Tom's letter to her mentioning the "secret," but we don't have her letter to him. Did she destroy it? From Ima we have no letters, no diary, no nothing. We know that she was still in Germany, maybe still living in Berlin. 

        

         What was she doing?