DEAR THYRSIS:

Your last letters have been very beautiful. I see one thing--though you inform me that you believe you are a hard man, your natural gentleness and sympathy of heart would be the ruin of both of us in the future if I would permit it. But I think you can trust me, not ever as long as I live to lead you into weakness. My desperateness, before I received your letter saying that I might come with you, was rather dreadful; it made me doubt myself, for it was so difficult to keep myself from going to pieces. I have been wicked enough, to wonder whether I could ever make you feel as I felt for two days--if I could only bring to your heart that one pang, the only real one I ever felt in my life! But it taught me one thing, that the only road toward realization of life and one's self is through suffering. I found out that I could bear, for it seems to me as I look back at that horrible nightmare, that it was almost by a superhuman effort I was able to read the letter at all. But enough of that!

I think I have effectually cured myself of any weak yearning for your love. I go to you in gratefulness, knowing what I lack and what you need. Anything my love can do for you, it shall do. It may have some power--I sometimes think that it could have more than you realize.

I suppose every woman has thought that the man she loved was her very life, but I do not think it of you, I simply _know_ it. I must go with you, whether I loved you or not.

Meanwhile my love has a.s.sumed a strength to me that I never felt before.

I don't know how my wild and incoherent letters have affected you, but there were many times when I longed to get hold of you, literally, and simply shake into you some recognition of my soul. Oh, I am afraid you couldn't get away from me; the more merciless you are to me, the wilder I get.

I am possessed by so many opposite moods and influences. I am afraid of you a little. I never know what you are going to do to me.

I feel, I cannot help but feel, that I am part of your life, now, you could not neglect me any more than you could your own soul. I consider you just as responsible for mine as you are for your own. I say this with no doubts, but know that it is true, and you must know it.

XVI

DEAR THYRSIS:

You certainly have a wonderful task in store for me, and I pray G.o.d to give me strength for it. I can see very plainly that you expect to find the essence of my soul better than yours, because it seems that you are making my task harder than yours.

Do you know, I have actually found myself asking, at times, with a certain defiant rage--if you were actually going to give love to your princess before you had made her suffer! So far you have not made her suffer at all. I had become quite excited over this idea--though perhaps I had no right to. I suppose it is all right, because she is an imaginary person, and you can endow her with all the perfections you please. She is triumphant and thrilling, and worthy of love--whereas I am just little Corydon, whom you have known all your life, and who is stupid and helpless, and impossible to imagine romances about! Is that the way of it?

XVII

MY DEAREST THYRSIS:

A long letter has just come to me. I always receive your letters with many palpitations, and by the time I get through reading, my cheeks are flaming. It is too bad it takes letters so long to go to and fro.

I have finally come to bear the att.i.tude towards myself, that I would to a naughty child. I will have no nonsense, and all my absurdities and inefficiencies _must_ be cured. I think I have come to know myself a little better within the last few days. I know that I have no right to quick victories, or any happiness at all, even your love. I tell you truly, if it were only possible, I would go away this minute--do you hear?--oh! to some lonely place, and then I would do something with myself. I want to be alone, alone--I want to be face to face with myself, and G.o.d, if possible! I have come to the conclusion that I can do anything I must do. I think (I am not sure) I could give you up, if I were obliged to, and go away by myself and try alone. If I do not have you, I must have solitude.

XVIII

MY DEAREST CORYDON:

Thinking about my work this morning, and how hard it was, and how much strength it would take, my thoughts turned to you, and I discovered, as never before, just how I like to think of you. It seemed to me that you were part of the raw material that I had to use; that I had mastered you, and was going to make you what you had to be. And there woke in my heart at those words a fierceness of purpose that I had never felt in my life before--I was quite mad with it; and you cried out to escape me, but I would not let you go, but held you right tightly in my arms. And so--I do not mean to let you go! I shall bear you away with me, and make you what I wish. And the promise of marriage that I make you is just this: not that I love you--I do not love you; but what I wish the woman to be whom I am to love--that I will make you!

And do not ever dare to ask me for any other promise, for you will not get it. You will come with this.

XIX

MY THYRSIS:

I had an _iron grip_ at my heart just now, as I was trying to study.

I had a foreboding of something--and then I came home and found your letter telling me I was yours, and I _must._ At last I may go to you the way I wish! My love, my love, I do not care what you are, or what you do to me, as long as I may go with you.

How I laugh at myself as I say it! You have mastered me to worship your _life_--not you. I shall not work for your love, I shall work to live.

Our love will be one of the incidents of our life. Meanwhile, I may go with you, that is all that I say--I sing it. I may go with you, not to happiness, but to necessity!

And now that cursed German! It hangs over my head like a sword of Damocles I have heard of--though I don't know why it was held over his head!

You think our love was settling into the cooing state! Dear me, Thyrsis, I hope I will not always have to yell to you over a foggy ocean!

XX

DEAR THYRSIS:

Can you imagine what it must be to be shut up in a little room on a rainy night, with the children and people screaming under your window?

That is my position now.

I find myself hard to manage at times. I want to become discouraged or melancholy or disgusted, but I drive myself better than I used to. I even was happy a little for a few moments to-night. I was playing one of my piano-pieces, and I found myself imagining all sorts of things. But this happens very seldom, and only lasts for a moment. I often wonder at myself. Two months ago I did not love you one particle; I love you now, so that--so that it is impossible for me to do anything else. In fact I did not realize how much I loved you until that terrible moment when I read you did not love me. I saw how impossible it will be to cease to love you, no matter what you do to me. I do not know _why_ it is; I simply know it is, and perhaps some day I may teach _you_ how to love. I do not imagine you know how very well, at present--no, Thyrsis, I don't.

I know your true self now, and I love it better than ever I loved the other. I say it with a certain grimness. I know you, your real self, and I love it.

Know, oh, my Beloved, that in the last three months you have grown to me from a boy into a man, into my husband! When I think of you as you were at first you seem a child compared to what you are now.

XXI

DEAREST LOVE:

Last night, as I went to sleep, I was thinking of you and our problem, and there were all sorts of uncertainties; but one thing I have to tell you, my Corydon--that it came to me how sweet and true, and how pure and good you have been; and I loved you very, very much indeed. I thought: I should like to tell her that, and ask her always to be so n.o.ble and unselfish. Can you not realize how all your deficiencies are as nothing to me, in the sight of that one unapproachable perfection? For my Corydon is all devotion and love, and pure, pure, maiden goodness! And there is quite a whole heart full of feeling for you in that, and I wish I had you here to tell you.

XXII

MY CORYDON:

I am coming more and more to realize myself, and what is the single faculty I have been given. I think of a dear clergyman friend I used to have, and I realize what a _loving_ heart is--what it is to delight in a human soul for its own sake, and to be kind to it, fond of it. And I know that there could not be a man with less of that than I have.

Certainly I know this, I never did love a soul for its own sake, and don't think I could. I love beauty, and truth, and power, and I hate everything else, if it come across my way. If I had to live the life of that clergyman friend I should be insane in a month. I see this as something very hateful; but there is only one thing I can do, to see that I hate my own self more than I hate any other self--and work, work, for the thing I love.

You asked me once to tell you if your death would make any difference to me. If you were to die to-morrow I should feel that a sacred opportunity was gone out of my life, that all my efforts must have less result forever after. But I do not think I should stop working a day.

I love you because you are something upon which I may exert the force of my will. I honestly believe that the truest word, the nearest to my character, I ever spoke. If I care about you it is for one thing, and one only--because you are a soul hungry for life, because you are capable of sacrifice and high effort, because you are sensitive and eager. I love you and honor you for this; I take you to my bosom, I give all my life to your service; and I shall make you a perfect woman, or else kill you.

You must understand what I want; I want no concrete thing, no dozen languages to throw you into despair. I want effort, effort, _effort!_ That's all. And I believe that you might be a stronger soul than I at this moment, if only you chose to hunt yourself out and fight! That is truly what I feel about you, and that is why I love you.

XXIII

DEAREST THYRSIS:

I have no more to say, my precious one; I bow in joy before your will, your certainty, your power. Let it be so, I shall adore you as I so long to do.

You are giving me all I could ask for. What more could I wish from you, dear Thyrsis, than to know you will never leave my side? I will try not to do any more bemoaning of my shortcomings. To-night I reached a wonderful security and almost sublimity, until I could have fallen on my face and praised G.o.d for His mercy. I talked out loud to myself, I exhorted myself, I explained to myself what is my beauty and possibility in life--the _reason_ for which I was born. I was quite lifted out of myself, by a conviction that came like a benediction, that the essence of my soul was good and pure, and that if anybody upon earth had the power to reach G.o.d, it was myself.

Dear G.o.d, _how_ I have spent the years of my life! like an imbecile! But you--if you take me, I shall go mad--I shall love you like a tigress! I shall implore you to invent any way that will enable me to realize life!

Oh, if you take me, how madly I shall love you! I fancy myself seeing you now, and I don't know what I should do--I love you so dreadfully! I think of you, and everything about you seems so wondrously beautiful to me!

I almost have a feeling that I have no right to love you so much. Oh, tell me, do you want me to love you as I can? Already you seem part of me, mine--mine! And it is wonderful how you help me.

XXIV