Darling, darling, don't ask me to like Nancy. The thing's unthinkable.
Later.
Now I know why I am wiser than you: life in kitchens and _Klatsches_
turns the soul gray very early. Didn't one of your poets sing of
somebody who had a sad lucidity of soul? I'm afraid that is what's the
matter with me.
X
Jena, Nov. 19th.
Oh, what nonsense everything seems,--everything of the nature of
differences, of arguments, on a clear morning up among the hills. I am
ashamed of what I wrote about Nancy; ashamed of my eagerness and heat
about a thing that does not matter. On the hills this morning, as I was
walking in the sunshine, it seemed to me that I met God. And He took me
by the hand, and let me walk with Him. And He showed me how beautiful
the world is, how beautiful the background He has given us, the
spacious, splendid background on which to paint our large charities and
loves. And I looked across the hilltops, golden, utterly peaceful, and
amazement filled me in the presence of that great calm at the way I
flutter through my days and at the noise I make. Why should I cry out
before I am hurt? flare up into heat and clamor? The pure light up there
made it easy to see clearly, and I saw that I have been silly and
ungrateful. Forgive me. You know best about Nancy, you who have seen
her; and I, just come down from that holy hour on the hills, am very
willing to love her. I will not turn my back upon a ready friend. She
can have no motive but a good one. Roger, I am a blunderer, a clumsy
creature with not one of my elemental passions bound down yet into the
decent listlessness of chains. But I shall grow better, grow more worthy
of you. Not a day shall pass without my having been a little wiser than
the day before, a little kinder, a little more patient. I wish you had
been with me this morning. It was so still and the sky so clear that I
sat on the old last year's grass as warmly as in summer. I felt
irradiated with life and love; light shining on to every tiresome
incident of life and turning it into beauty, love for the whole
wonderful world, and all the people in it, and all the beasts and
flowers, and all the happy living things. Indeed blessings have been
given me in full measure, pressed down and running over. In the whole of
that little town at my feet, so quiet, so bathed in lovely light, there
was not, there could not be, another being so happy as myself. Surely I
am far too happy to grudge accepting a kindness? I tell you I marvel at
the energy of my protest yesterday. Perhaps it was--oh Roger, after
those hours on the hills I will be honest, I will pull off the veil from
feelings that the female mind generally refuses to uncover--perhaps the
real reason, the real, pitiful, mean reason was that I felt sure somehow
from your description of her that Nancy's _blouses_ must be very perfect
things, things beyond words _very_ perfect. And I was jealous of her
blouses. There now. Good-by.