You will have got the telegram I sent you long before you got the
parcel of letters: you will have got the note I wrote you by the same
post as the letters themselves. If I have taken these three days to
myself before again writing to you it has been because I have needed to
recover my power of thinking. Now, in a way, I have recovered it--and
it is only fair to say that I have devoted all my thoughts to how the
new situation affects you--and you in your relations to me.
It places me in your hands--let that be written first and foremost. You
have to decree my life or my death. For I take it that now we can never
get back again into our old position: I have spoken, you have heard me
speak. The singular unity, the silence of our old life is done with
for good. There is perhaps no reason why this should not be so: silence
is no necessary part of our relationship. But it has seemed to make a
rather exquisite bond between us.
It must, if I am to continue to live--it must be replaced by some other
bond. In our silence we have seemed to speak in all sorts of strange
ways: we have perhaps read each other’s thoughts. I have seen words
form themselves upon your lips. But now you must--there is no way out
of it--you _must_ write to me. You must write to me fully: all your
thoughts. You must, as I have done, find the means of speech--or I can
no longer live....