No, no, I cannot read it! What have I done that you will not
come to me? They are mad here, telling me to be calm, that I am not to
go to you. I too am out of my mind--except that I love you. I know
nothing except that. Beloved, only on my lips will I take my dismissal
from yours: not God himself can claim you from me till you have done me
that justice. Kiss me once more, and then, if you can, say we must part.
You cannot!--Ah, come here where my heart is, and you cannot!
Have I never told you enough how I love you? Dearest, I have no words
for all my love: I have no pride in me. Does not this alone tell
you?--You are sending me away, and I cry to you to spare me. Can I love
you more than that? What will you have of me that I have not given? Oh,
you, the sun in my dear heavens--if I lose you, what is left of me?
Could you break so to pieces even a woman you did not love? And me you
_do_ love,--you _do_. Between all this denial of me, and all this
silence of words that you have put your name to, I see clearly that you
are still my lover.--Your writing breaks with trying not to say it: you
say again and again that there is no fault in me. I swear to you,
dearest, there is none, unless it be loving you: and how can you mean
that? For what are you and I made for unless for each other? With all
our difference people tell us we are alike. We were shaped for each
other from our very birth. Have we not proved it in a hundred days of
happiness, which have lifted us up to the blue of a heaven higher than
any birds ever sang? And now you say--taking on you the blame for the
very life-blood in us both--that the fault is yours, and that your fault
is to have allowed me to love you and yourself to love me!
Who has suddenly turned our love into a crime? Beloved, is it a sin that
here on earth I have been seeing God through you? Go away from me, and He
is gone also. Ah, sweetheart, let me see you before all my world turns
into a wilderness! Let me know better why,--if my senses are to be emptied
of you. My heart can never let you go. Do you wish that it should?
Bring your own here, and see if it can tell me that! Come and listen to
mine! Oh, dearest heart that ever beat, mine beats so like yours that
once together you shall not divide their sound!
Beloved, I will be patient, believe me, to any words you can say: but I
cannot be patient away from you. If I have seemed to reproach you, do
not think that now. For you are to give me a greater joy than I ever had
before when you take me in your arms again after a week that has spelled
dreadful separation. And I shall bless you for it--for this present pain
even--because the joy will be so much greater.
Only come: I do not live till you have kissed me again. Oh, my beloved,
how cruel love may seem if we do not trust it enough! My trust in you has
come back in a great rush of warmth, like a spring day after frost. I
almost laugh as I let this go. It brings you,--perhaps before I wake: I
shall be so tired to-night. Call under my window, make me hear in my
sleep. I will wake up to you, and it shall be all over before the rest of
the world wakes. There is no dream so deep that I shall not hear you out
of the midst of it. Come and be my morning-glory to-morrow without fail. I
will rewrite nothing that I have written--let it go! See me out of deep
waters again, because I have thought so much of you! I have come through
clouds and thick darkness. I press your name to my lips a thousand times.
As sure as sunrise I say to myself that you will come: the sun is not
truer to his rising than you to me.
Love will go flying after this till I sleep. God bless you!--and me also;
it is all one and the same wish.--Your most true, loving, and dear
faithful one.