I have to own that I know your will now, at last. Without seeing you I am
convinced: you have a strong power in you to have done that! You have told
me the word I am to say to you: it is your bidding, so I say it--Good-by.
But it is a word whose meaning I cannot share.
Yet I have something to tell you which I could not have dreamed if it
had not somehow been true: which has made it possible for me to believe,
without hearing you speak it, that I am to be dismissed out of your
heart.--May the doing of it cost you far less pain than I am fearing!
You did not come, though I promised myself so certainly that you would:
instead came your last very brief note which this is to obey. Still I
watched for you to come, believing it still and trusting to silence on
my part to bring you more certainly than any more words could do. And
at last either you came to me, or I came to you: a bitter last meeting.
Perhaps your mind too holds what happened, if so I have got truly at
what your will is. I must accept it as true, since I am not to see you
again. I cannot tell you whether I thought it or dreamed it, but it
seems still quite real, and has turned all my past life into a mockery.
When I came I was behind you; then you turned and I could see your
face--you too were in pain: in that we seemed one. But when I touched
you and would have kissed you, you shuddered at me and drew back your
head. I tell you this as I would tell you anything unbelievable that I
had heard told of you behind your back. You see I am obeying you at
last.
For all the love which you gave me when I seemed worthy of it I thank
you a thousand times. Could you ever return to the same mind, I should
be yours once more as I still am; never ceasing on my side to be your
lover and servant till death, and--if there be anything more--after as
well.
My lips say amen now: but my heart cannot say it till breath goes out of
my body. Good-by: that means--God be with you. I mean it; but He seems to
have ceased to be with me altogether. Good-by, dearest. I kiss your heart
with writing for the last time, and your eyes, that will see nothing more
from me after this. Good-by.
Note.--All the letters which follow were found lying loosely
together. They only went to their destination after the writer's death.