A secret, dearest, that will be no secret soon: before I am done with
twenty-three I shall have passed my age. Beloved, it hurts me more than I
can say that the news of it should come to you from anyone but me: for
this, though I write it, is already a dead letter, lost like a predestined
soul even in the pains that gave it birth. Yes, it does pain me, frightens
me even, that I must die all by myself, and feeling still so young. I
thought I should look forward to it, but I do not; no, no, I would give
much to put it off for a time, until I could know what it will mean for me
as regards you. Oh, if you only knew and _cared,_ what wild comfort I
might have in the knowledge! It seems strange that if I were going away
from the chance of a perfect life with you I should feel it with less pain
than I feel this. The dust and the ashes of life are all that I have to
let fall: and it is bitterness itself to part with them.
How we grow to love sorrow! Joy is never so much a possession--it goes
over us, incloses us like air or sunlight; but sorrow goes into us and
becomes part of our flesh and bone. So that I, holding up my hand to the
sunshine, see sorrow red and transparent like stained glass between me
and the light of day, sorrow that has become inseparably mine, and is
the very life I am wishing to keep!
Dearest, will the world be more bearable to you when I am out of it? It is
selfish of me not to wish so, since I can satisfy you in this so soon!
Every day I will try to make it my wish: or wish that it may be so when
the event comes--not a day before. Till then let it be more bearable that
I am still alive: grant me, dearest, that one little grace while I live!
Bearable! My sorrow _is_ bearable, I suppose, because I do bear it from
day to day: otherwise I would declare it not to be. Don't suffer as I
do, dearest, unless that will comfort you.
One thing is strange, but I feel quite certain of it: when I heard that I
carried death about in me, scarcely an arm's-length away, I thought
quickly to myself that it was not the solution of the mystery. Others
might have thought that it was: that because I was to die so soon,
therefore I was not fit to be your wife. But I know it was not that. I
know that whatever hopes death in me put an end to, you would have married
me and loved me patiently till I released you, as I am to so soon.
It is always this same woe that crops up: nothing I can ever think can
account for what has been decreed. That too is a secret: mine comes to
meet it. When it arrives shall I know?
And not a word, not a word of this can reach you ever! Its uses are
wrung out and drained dry to comfort me in my eternal solitude.
Good-night; very soon it will have to be good-by.