I wrote last night that you have something in your power. If you wished
it you could make me live on. I am confident that you will not wish
it: for you will understand that capriciously or intolerably I am
tired of living this life. I desire you so terribly that now, even the
excitement of fooling Burden no longer hypnotizes me into an acceptance
of life without you. Frankly, I am tired out. If I had to go on living
any longer I should have to ask you to be mine in one form or other.
With that and with my ability--for of course I have great ability--I
could go on fooling Burden for ever. I could restore: I could make
sounder than ever it was that preposterous “going concern” the Burden
Estate. Unless I like to let them, I think that the wife’s solicitors
will not discover what I have done. For, frankly, I have put myself out
in this matter in order to be amusing to myself and ingenious. I have
forged whole builder’s estimates for repairs that were never executed:
I have invented whole hosts of defaulting tenants. It has not been
latterly for money that I have done this: it has been simply for the
sheer amusement of looking at Edward Burden and saying to myself:
“Ah: you trust me, my sleek friend. Well....”
But indeed I fancy that I am rich enough to be able to restore to
them all that I have taken. And, looking at Edward Burden’s little
_fiancée_, I was almost tempted to set upon that weary course of
juggling. But I am at the end of my tether. I cannot live without you
longer. And I do not wish to ask you. Later I will tell you. Or No--I
will tell you now.
You see, my dear thing, it is a question of going one better. It
would be easy enough to deceive your husband: it would be easier
still to go away together. I think that neither you nor I have ever
had any conscientious scruples. But, analysing the matter down to its
very depths, I think we arrive at this, that without the motives for
self-restraint that other people have we are anxious to show more
self-restraint than they. We are doing certain work not for payment
but for sheer love of work. Do I make myself clear? For myself I have
a great pride in your image. I can say to myself: “Here is a woman, my
complement. She has no respect for the law. She does not value what a
respect for the law would bring her. Yet she remains purer than the
purest of the makers of law.” And I think it is the converse of that
feeling that you have for me.
If you desire me to live on, I will live on: I am so swayed by you
that if you desire me to break away from this ideal of you, the breath
of a command will send me round to your side.
I am ready to give my life for this Ideal: nay more, I am ready to
sacrifice you to it, since I know that life for you will remain a very
bitter thing. I know, a little, what renunciation means.
And I am asking you to bear it--for the sake of my ideal of you. For,
assuredly, unless I can have you I must die--and I know that you will
not ask me to have you. And I love you: and bless you for it.