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 </-a--cs
 
 BY THE AUTHOR OF 
 
 HIS LETTERS 
 
 MARIONETTES 
 
 One Volume, izmo, Extra Cloth, $1.00. 
 
 " Bears the same delicate touches which have made 
 all of her earlier works delightful." Chicago Mail. 
 
 " Of absorbing interest." Boston Home Journal. 
 " A powerful story." New York Recorder. 
 
 " In some respects it may be regarded as her mas- 
 terpiece." Chicago Herald. 
 
 " Every page breathes freshness and originality." 
 Boston Courier. 
 
 "Julien Gordon is one of the freshest, raciest, 
 keenest, and most successful of American writers." 
 Ohio State Journal.
 
 HIS LETTERS
 
 HIS LETTERS 
 
 BY 
 
 JULIEN GORDON 
 
 AUTHOR OF " MARIONETTES," "A DIPLOMAT'S DIARY," "A SUC- 
 CESSFUL MAN," "VAMPIRES," " MLLE. RESEDA," 
 "A PURITAN PAGAN," ETC., ETC.
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY 
 CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 THE MBRSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
 RAHWAY, N. J.
 
 HIS LETTERS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 'T^HERE had been a crowd about her 
 1 painting all of the day, we were told at 
 the door. But when we entered the gallery 
 from the wet, darkening street, there were 
 but a few stragglers left, loitering languidly, 
 not as if they had a care for the pictures, 
 but because they were afraid to venture 
 into a cold, gusty twilight. By and by 
 even these threw away or rolled up their 
 catalogues, lowered their veils and hoisted 
 up their petticoats, or turned up their collars 
 and their trousers, as their sex might dic- 
 tate, and made for the great banging baize 
 door. So Thornton and I were left alone. 
 
 He had passed the picture once or twice 
 with his rapid, cold glance, but, when he had 
 the field all to himself, he came back to it 
 
 2228416
 
 a HIS LETTERS 
 
 with a certain eager restlessness that did not 
 escape my notice. One was apt to notice 
 what Thornton did. What is it about some 
 people that so arrests, so excites our curi- 
 osity? It is a riddle, sphinxlike, unreadable, 
 untellable. We may say of this or that 
 man or woman that we love or hate them, 
 approve or disapprove ; we may praise or 
 censure them, extol or vilify, there is just 
 one thing that we cannot do ignore them. 
 They hold us ; be it to irritate or to charm, 
 it matters not. We say of such an one : 
 he or she is a person, an individual, a real- 
 ity ; occupying space in a world of shadows. 
 We breathe them ; whether they be mephitic 
 or wholesome may depend upon our lungs, 
 but at any rate they have furnished us with 
 an atmosphere. It environs us, we absorb 
 it, and it becomes a part of us. 
 
 Why do I say all this ? I was thinking 
 of poor Thornton. No one that I have ever 
 met had more of this curious, inexpressible 
 impelling power, force, call it what you will. 
 
 I can see him now with his pale and tragic 
 face; his eyes that seemed to pierce the 
 souls of others, while they kept so well
 
 HIS LETTERS 3 
 
 their own secrets ; his tall, straight figure, 
 his elegant, aristocratic hands ; his set lips, 
 with their expression which could be so 
 sternly harsh, and again melt suddenly into 
 a smile, whose sensitive beauty warmed the 
 heart. 
 
 As he looked at this picture which, in an 
 hour, had made the artist famous, I looked 
 at him. I often did so, furtively, as men 
 rarely look at each other. There was some- 
 thing in him that fascinated. He had come 
 to the city where I dwelt, the great city 
 of our Eastern civilization, alone, without 
 wealth, with few friends, and he had thrown 
 his glove across its cruel face defiantly, and 
 he had conquered it. Of course he had 
 been more or less well equipped ; he was 
 well-born, well-mannered, had taken high 
 honors at his university was, in fine, a 
 gentleman. Yet how often all this is not 
 enough ! Later, terrible troubles had come 
 upon him, troubles of which he never spoke, 
 and he had for many years lived like a re- 
 cluse, except when his voice thundered at 
 the bar or from the tribune. 
 
 I looked down at the catalogue, where I
 
 4 HIS LETTERS 
 
 held it open with my thumb, and read the 
 name of the picture before which we had 
 paused, " Two Burdens." A desolate brown 
 field, flat, stretching away to a dark red 
 horizon, where a dying sun lay on a pile of 
 clouds. Wind-swept, sere. In the fore- 
 ground a few scraggy bushes, wan, fruitless. 
 Across the melancholy desolation two hu- 
 man figures hurried. One was a humble, 
 trembling, crouching creature, an old man 
 in tattered garments, bowed under a great 
 load which lay across his shoulders ; totter- 
 ing, weary, yet with a kindly, nay, happy 
 light in two uplooking eyes. One whom 
 Napoleon, meeting, would have said, "Je 
 mtcarte toujours pour qui porte un far- 
 deau" 
 
 The other figure was that of a woman ; 
 a woman tall, queenly, lovely, dressed in 
 queenly apparel. There were jewels upon 
 the slender shoe, from which her garments 
 were swept backward by a cruel blast, and 
 jewels on her fingers and at her throat. 
 She was wrapped in a rich cloak, or rather 
 coat, cut in a strange fashion, of that dusky 
 rose sheen of which Tintoretto seems alone
 
 'HIS LETTERS 5 
 
 to have mastered the yellowing tones, but 
 which the brush here had caught and 
 riveted. Her head was borne erect and 
 haughtily. One felt that those proud 
 shoulders had never stooped to bear a 
 weight ; but in her face ! Never was deeper 
 anguish painted, never profounder agony 
 portrayed. She seemed like one hastening 
 to meet half-way some fateful presage, or 
 speeding to escape some torturing doom. 
 There was a wistful yearning on her fore- 
 head as of one who, seeking life, had found 
 but death. It was a striking picture, start- 
 ling ; and yet one felt to the many it might 
 bring no meaning. 
 
 " Who is the artist, did you say ? " asked 
 Thornton, turning to me eagerly, after 
 a long and speechless halt before the 
 canvas, on which a brilliant light was 
 cast. 
 
 " Why," I said, astonished, " have you not 
 heard, do you not know ? " And then I 
 named her. 
 
 "Ah, is it she?" 
 
 " Yes ; are you one of her friends ? " 
 
 14 No," he answered smilingly ; " bats and
 
 6 HIS LETTERS 
 
 owls don't play with birds of such glowing 
 plumage." 
 
 " But surely you have seen her?" 
 
 "I have not." 
 
 " Mrs. Moncrief is everywhere." 
 
 " I am nowhere. When the evening 
 comes I go back with other night hawks, 
 you know, into my woods. The light hurts 
 my eyes." 
 
 " And you think this remarkable ? " 
 
 " I do." 
 
 " She ought to know it." 
 
 " Pshaw ! " 
 
 " I shall tell her." 
 
 " She will only laugh." 
 
 " Why should she who lives among 
 pygmies laugh at the praise of a giant ? " 
 
 "If she lives among pygmies, I presume 
 they are to her taste." 
 
 " Can she who tells this story be a doll ? " 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. " Who knows? 
 There are women who have souls only in 
 the tips of their fingers," he said lightly. 
 
 "What, wield such a brush and have no 
 soul ? You blaspheme ! " 
 
 "I am an old blasphemer, Milburn."
 
 HIS LETTERS 7 
 
 " Yet we hard sinners stopped longer 
 here, I find, than that fair-faced girl who 
 stared a moment, yawned, and moved on, 
 apparently much bored." 
 
 " I saw that girl ; she was craning for a 
 lover, who didn't come." 
 
 " He was not worth expecting, then." 
 
 " My dear Milburn, you don't know the 
 sex." 
 
 " Well, were I a girl I wouldn't look at 
 painted things when I expected my lover. 
 Love would suffice." 
 
 " Do you know the color of it ? " 
 
 " Do you ? " 
 
 "Why do you ask?" 
 
 " I ask because it's interesting." 
 
 "What, its color?" 
 
 " No, you." 
 
 "I?" 
 
 " Yes, you in conjunction with love." 
 
 " Oh, I am defunct ! " 
 
 " Since when ?" 
 
 " Since years ; dead as a dog." 
 
 " Dead ! and that splendid outburst of 
 eloquence, no later than yesterday, that car- 
 ried hundreds away breathless on its wing ?"
 
 8 HIS LETTERS 
 
 " That's mere froth. That isn't living. 
 Dead men have voices too sometimes. By 
 Jove ! but I have missed my train ! " He 
 looked at the slowly vibrating pendulum of 
 the clock that hung aloft. 
 
 " Dine with me at the club, or at my 
 rooms, as you like." 
 
 "Your rooms, then." 
 
 By and by, over our cigars, " Milburn," 
 he cried suddenly, "she's a genius ! " 
 
 " Who's a genius ? " 
 
 "The lady who painted the picture, Mrs. 
 Moncrief." 
 
 " Why don't you go and tell her so, then ? 
 Women don't smite men for boldness." 
 
 He gave a short, dry laugh, " I am timid." 
 
 "Timid! Afraid of stage-fright, eh?" 
 It was my turn to laugh now at the man 
 who had enthralled thousands with his 
 voice. 
 
 " Exactly that." He shook the ashes 
 from his forefinger. 
 
 " She's used to men, the fair Heloise ; 
 she'll put you at your ease ; she isn't timid. 
 But, if tradition tells the truth, it says that 
 women have had cause to be afraid of you."
 
 HIS LETTERS 9 
 
 " Tradition lies ! " 
 " Humph." 
 
 Then somehow we fell to talking of 
 other things. 
 
 And now that he whom I was proud to 
 call my friend has passed into the world of 
 shadows, and that she who inspired in him 
 the mad devotion few women ever know, 
 has also slipped into the silence that sur- 
 rounds the spheres, methinks it is not all 
 unfitting that these letters simply the 
 record of a man's loving should be given 
 to the world. They are but fragments for 
 some were lost, I ween, or willfully de- 
 stroyed which through the strangest cir- 
 cumstance fell to my keeping. In publish- 
 ing them to-day I break no vow, am 
 disloyal to no promise ; I wrong no living 
 soul, neither do I betray the dead. He 
 who penned them was a man of genius. 
 But love, such love as his, is too absorbing 
 even for genius to portray, save haltingly 
 Hence I make no claim to the exhibition 
 of genius in these letters. 
 
 But spontaneity of expression true love
 
 to HIS LETTERS 
 
 must always find. If these prove that love 
 still lives with all its exaltation and its 
 fervor in an age accused of materialism and 
 of hardness, 'tis well. Of love, however, 
 there are no proofs. He who would prove 
 religion falters ; he can but pray. He who 
 seeks decisive proofs of love is either knave 
 or fool. 
 
 Such as they are, I give them. To me 
 they were delivered in two packets, tied 
 with a silken string all worn and soiled. 
 There were no words upon them, except, 
 marked in a woman's hand, " Before " and 
 " After." The first were written, therefore, 
 e'er they met, the late ones afterward. Be- 
 tween them I have written a few words. 
 They are of her he worshiped. I knew her 
 well, or thought I did. I may have been 
 mistaken. 
 
 Letter First. 
 
 MY DEAR MRS. MONCRIEF : 
 
 Although I have not had the honor of an 
 introduction, my name may not be entirely 
 unknown to you. 
 . I venture to send you a collection of
 
 HIS LETTERS II 
 
 ephemeral papers published some years ago 
 by a friend of mine. They have, in my 
 estimation, some merit, and their subject, 
 " Modern Art," may commend them to your 
 favor. 
 
 Should you not care to read the book, 
 may it serve, at least, to attest the respect, 
 appreciation, and admiration with which 
 your genius has inspired me. I have seen 
 your picture ! Need I say more? 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 HUBERT THORNTON. 
 
 Letter Second. 
 
 MY DEAR MRS. MONCRIEF : 
 
 I had not thought that you would deign 
 to answer my note, although I hoped you 
 would accept the little work on art. I can- 
 not tell you how deeply your courtesy has 
 touched me. " Proud of a letter from 
 me?" Heavens! I wish you could read 
 in my heart the humility your words 
 awaken. 
 
 Faithfully your servant, 
 
 HUBERT THORNTON,
 
 13 fiJS LETTERS 
 
 Letter Third. 
 
 MY DEAR MADAME : 
 
 / help you f That is impossible. You 
 little know how much it would be in your 
 power to do for me. In a sad life your 
 genius penetrates like a ray of sunshine, to 
 warm and invigorate. 
 
 But I say too much ; pardon me ! 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 H. T. 
 Letter Fourth. 
 
 There seems to be no doubt that the let- 
 ter which I sent at five o'clock yesterday 
 was delivered. What has become of it? 
 What also has become of your second letter 
 that I should have gotten yesterday ? Bear 
 with me for a moment while I tell you 
 about the last two days. On Friday, I was 
 not fortunate enough to get a line. That did 
 not hinder me from sending you a letter that 
 day. Why should it ? I did not write to 
 you because I really believed that you could 
 care to receive my letters, but because it 
 gave me such great pleasure to write them. 
 On Saturday morning, I got a kind, a most
 
 HIS LETTERS 13 
 
 kind message in the letter whose envelope 
 I inclosed to you two hours ago. From 
 something that you graciously said I hoped 
 that I might have still another line from 
 you yesterday ; but that again did not with- 
 hold me from sending you a long letter at 
 five o'clock. From you, since eight o'clock 
 Saturday morning, I have heard nothing, 
 until I got the note which has distressed me 
 so to-day. You tell me that you have 
 failed. Of course you have failed. I 
 know well enough what that means. It 
 means that out of sheer compassion you 
 did try to think a little kindly of me, but 
 that you have found you could not. I am 
 not surprised. I deserve nothing at your 
 hands. I would give no woman a moment's 
 weariness, least of all, one whom . . . but 
 my tongue is palsied. 
 
 Letter Fifth. 
 
 I cannot understand your letter. I re- 
 ceived but one letter from you yesterday. 
 It was in the inclosed envelope, and came 
 by post very early in the morning. I hoped 
 for another, but got not a word until this
 
 14 HIS LETTERS 
 
 moment. I wrote to you, however, and 
 that there might be no possible miscarriage 
 I took myself and placed it in the hands of 
 the messenger. Where is that letter? It 
 would simply kill me to have that letter go 
 astray. 
 
 I can never trust that messenger again. 
 The torrent shall find other channels. You 
 should have nothing to do with one so 
 cursed of fortune. As I told you, I have 
 no luck. You ought to have a supersti- 
 tious horror of me, but you have not, have 
 you ? That is because you are an angel. 
 
 H. T. 
 
 Letter Sixth. 
 
 So the letter is lost. It seems to me that 
 I could have hurled the earth from its axis 
 to get back that letter from a stranger's 
 hand ; the thought that any eye but one 
 should look on it is pure agony. I cannot 
 rewrite it ; I might as well try to recall the 
 blood my heart lost yesterday. But my 
 heart is still strenuous, still loyal, though I 
 thought it would break this morning. 
 
 But I can write another one. What
 
 HIS LETTERS 1 5 
 
 smote me as with a bludgeon was your 
 thought that I could get a line from you, 
 and let a day pass without answering it, or 
 thanking you for it. Why, what should 
 hinder me ? I should have to be dead. 
 Don't imagine that I wish to place you un- 
 der any similar obligation. I would not 
 have you write a word that you did not 
 wish to write, that you could help writing. 
 What would such a word be worth to me ? 
 I will not even tell you again when your 
 silence makes my day a blank. Ah, I am 
 grateful for small favors. 
 
 Do you think I do not thirst to see you ? 
 What chains at my door and chains at yours 
 could bar me out ? 
 
 I have an atonement to make. I must 
 not give it the coup de jarnac. Jarnac cut 
 the cords of his opponent's knees, and of 
 course the poor wretch fell prostrate, and 
 all in vain he waved his sword. 
 
 But write I must. When once I thought 
 that I might not, my head fell forward on 
 the table and I sobbed. 
 
 Is it true that you are not well ? O 
 God, it is not possible to receive so much
 
 16 HIS LETTERS 
 
 of sweet and bitter in one stroke ! But I 
 will be good, so quiet, so very calm ; and 
 you will still let me write to you now and 
 then. I will never tease and worry you. 
 I will not say a word about myself, or even 
 about you. I will talk only of art or of 
 books. Surely it cannot vex you to hear 
 me talk of these. 
 
 Ah, as I told you once, a touch of some 
 hands suffices to freeze or to inflame ; to lift 
 to heaven or plunge in the abyss. Do not 
 be careless with such touches. If I had 
 your power to appall, or torture, or ravish 
 with a word, I would be generous. If the 
 letter which you so sweetly sent me yester- 
 day went by post, it may reach me to- 
 morrow morning. Let me hang upon that 
 hope to-night. You saw that when I sent 
 you the envelope I kept the precious 
 letter that it held. It was the only one I 
 had left. I could not part with it quite yet. 
 
 I cannot write more I have been made 
 so timid by your first letter this morning ; 
 you made it so clear to me that it would be 
 much wiser if I wrote no more. Good- 
 night ! Good-nigltn'
 
 HIS LETTERS 17 
 
 Letter Seventh. 
 
 . . . Let me tell you what you have done 
 for me. Of late, since you have let me 
 think of you a little, since I have not felt so 
 utterly daunted and dismayed, a wondrous 
 alchemy seems to have been working in my 
 brain ; you are always there. You exert 
 the strangest influence. I know that my 
 thoughts are more sinewy and more fecund, 
 that my vision is clearer ; but most marvel- 
 ous of all is the change that has come over 
 the face of the earth. It is eternal spring 
 with me ; I see all things through a haze 
 of sympathy and gratitude. I cannot 
 glance at anyone, or speak, or write with- 
 out an overflow of kindness from my heart. 
 Oh, others get some of the drops from the 
 fountain which your gentle wand made 
 gush out from the rock ; and think what 
 this means to me ! I used to be very 
 irritable ; my nerves seemed always on the 
 rack. Now, only one thing can disturb me. 
 If by chance a small annoyance or petty 
 impulse come to me, I smite them aside : 
 " Not now ! The house is full, the queen
 
 1 8 #fs LETTERS 
 
 is here." Does this seem to you but rav- 
 ing? I suppose so, for you have needed 
 no such purification, no such stimulus ; 
 and, if you did, it would not be in me that 
 you would seek it. 
 
 So you are learning to fence, madame. 
 Marguerite, too, was a mistress of the ra- 
 pier. I am not to be scared so easily. Do 
 you imagine you can hide your sex under 
 the costume of a page? Don't you know 
 that you are the very quintessence of femi- 
 ninity, that your whole being throbs with 
 that eternal womanly about which Goethe 
 used to speak ? Don't you know that is 
 why you can't help drawing "hearts after 
 you tangled in amorous nets?" 
 
 I had a lovely dream last night ; I 
 dreamed that I found again, in the folds of 
 a small note, some violets. But this time 
 their scent I could not recognize. It 
 startled, perplexed, excited me. "Is it pos- 
 sible," I said, " that these flowers can have 
 touched a lady's lips ; that what makes me 
 so giddy is the lingering perfume of her 
 breath ? " You see what idle fancies come 
 to one in the still night. At all events,
 
 HIS LETTERS 19 
 
 these violets have also ceased to have a 
 separate existence ; and I believe the 
 thoughts they are transformed to cannot 
 entirely discredit the sweetness of their 
 origin. 
 
 You ask me why I despise . I have 
 
 no personal grievance, but I have known him 
 do such mean things to men who were too 
 weak to defend themselves. He is always 
 squat like a toad, close at F.'s ear. But 
 there is no lack of mean men in the world, 
 and this is no reason why one should think 
 of him at all ; were it not that he has a 
 great deal of scholarship in certain direc- 
 tions. And he is one of the few men out- 
 side of professors' chairs who can discuss 
 intelligently Spinozism, Hegelism, the " Cat- 
 egories " of Kant, and so on. What arouses 
 contempt is to see a man, commanding 
 such weapons, apply them constantly to 
 sordid and petfy ends. It is as if a 
 tramp had sneaked into the arsenal of 
 heaven. 
 
 Good-by ! Ah that I might add another 
 word just here. 
 
 H. T.
 
 *0 HIS LETTERS 
 
 Letter Eighth. 
 
 I held my hand from writing, yesterday, 
 because I was trying to heed a certain 
 injunction : " Promise you will never send 
 me one line unless I bid you." I had to 
 disobey it once, on Tuesday, for there were 
 things that belonged to you ; things that 
 had been already said, but missed you. I 
 had firmly resolved, however, never to dis- 
 obey again, though I did hope that in the 
 spring, when you had gone to the warm 
 country where such as you should always 
 dwell, you would lift the veto, and permit 
 me to send to you my fleet, sad mes- 
 sengers. But now, in this morning's letter, 
 it half seems to me that you have lifted 
 it. You ask me questions. How shall I 
 answer them if my hands are tied ? If I 
 am wrong you shall rebuke me softly, and 
 I will be mute. 
 
 Ah ! those dainty volumes which you 
 sent me with my name inscribed, and your 
 lovely, lovely letter breathing forgiveness ; 
 and yet the gentlest of reproofs in every 
 line.. Yes, and there was something else
 
 HIS LETTERS 21 
 
 that tiny ribbon of pale blue silk that 
 fastened the little parcel. I said, "Was it 
 not her fingers that fashioned the little 
 knot?" I hope it was; don't tell me it 
 was not ; for I have made a collar of it and 
 have it now around my neck. A silken 
 chain is it ? Yes, but if it were forged of 
 iron, as a slave's collar ought to be, it could 
 not grip me tighter. 
 
 It is also sweet to me to think that the 
 scrap of your handwriting on these fly 
 leaves I am privileged to keep. But I 
 shall keep much more. Do you think that 
 my memory, which can store up such life- 
 less trash as dates, will ever surrender one 
 of your kindly words ? 
 
 Last night I heard some people praising 
 you. My heart warmed toward them, and 
 yet I felt a certain jealousy. Oh, peerless 
 one, what is this pain I feel when they but 
 say your name? 
 
 Do I like Camors? Do I like Alci- 
 biades ? Do I like Crichton ? Chastelard ? 
 Do I like any of these figures in history 
 or fiction ? which, of course, is the truest 
 history that curse boys by infection and
 
 22 ffIS LETTERS 
 
 make so often their lives a ruin ? Of 
 course I like them, because some natures 
 have an affinity for poisons and seem to 
 tolerate what to others would prove fatal. 
 But unhappily, in the packed thoroughfares 
 and ferocious struggle of to-day, a man can 
 only aim at excellence in one thing, and 
 fortunate is he if he reaches it. The most 
 that one can hope for is to convert one's 
 self into a useful machine. A man, in the 
 old sense, one cannot be ; that is the pity 
 of it and the tragedy. Men used to 
 conquer their destiny ; now they submit 
 to it. 
 
 The wonder about Camors is that a hum- 
 drum bourgeois like Feuillet should have 
 conceived him. But Compiegne accounts 
 for that. 
 
 Bret Harte ? Oh, yes ; I like him well 
 enough. But great Heavens! you must not 
 talk about "revering" anybody. It is for a 
 goddess, for the woman of whom one says, 
 " O dea certe /" that such an expression is 
 reserved, and I doubt if even a goddess 
 would quite like the word. I am sure that 
 Aphrodite would have curled her lip at it.
 
 HIS LETTERS 33 
 
 Letter Ninth. 
 
 If I lived forever and it seems to me 
 that you might give me what another, no 
 sweeter than you, gave Tithonus, the gift 
 of immortality I could not tell you how I 
 love you for driving up to my door to- 
 night. Ah, how right my instinct was 
 when I spoke of Marguerite de Valois, 
 whom I used to dream of for years. She 
 would have done what you did. And do 
 you know, I was at home at that moment. 
 I had been notified by telegram that a lot 
 of men were coming to see me me, in the 
 mood that I was in. I heard the sound of 
 wheels, and told a servant for God's sake 
 to make it plain that I was out, and would 
 not come home till midnight. Think of it ! 
 you were close to me, and I was kissing 
 your letter at that moment. That letter 
 came when I was dining. There was a 
 man with me. It agitated me greatly. I 
 needed ten minutes before I could answer 
 the sweetest message that could come to 
 any man upon this earth. I had not ex- 
 pected it ; I was thunderstruck. I thought,
 
 24 HIS LETTERS 
 
 " She believes me capable of wounding 
 her again ! Was not once enough ? And 
 it is therefore useless, for the moment, at 
 all events, to try to touch her heart. By 
 and by, perhaps, she may better understand 
 whether she has misjudged me ; and then 
 she has too much gentleness not to be 
 sorry for hurting me to-day." 
 
 But what right had I to feel hurt ? Any 
 hurt would be too good for me. What did 
 my repentance amount to if I could not 
 bear punishment? 
 
 But the idea that you imagined I mis- 
 took you, that I was talking to you as one 
 might have talked to any handsome or silly 
 woman 'twas that which made me feel a 
 sort of despair. " Can it be possible," I 
 said, " that she, whose every word, every 
 suggestion, every reticence I have been 
 poring over all night, can believe that I care 
 for her only for her fair face ? Behind how 
 many fair faces flashes such a soul as yours? 
 and what an indignity to me, although 
 my past may have deserved it. Should I 
 wince the less for that that you should 
 hold me capable of thinking of you in the
 
 HIS LETTERS *5 
 
 light way that men may think of other 
 women ah ! you don't know the difference 
 between little passions and a great one. 
 Neither did I know it until now. You 
 don't see that the one annihilates even the 
 memory of others ; and that a man can no 
 more think of anything but noble things 
 than, translated to paradise, he could look 
 back upon the follies that had sent him to 
 purgatory. 
 
 Ah 1 I was blessing you because I could 
 dream again ; because the sight of the deep 
 sky or a far-off strain of music could again 
 set my spirit soaring, as it did in the golden 
 days. And then, just then, came your letter, 
 in which you taxed, or seemed to tax me, 
 with speaking of you in the same breath 
 with a dreadful woman. Well, no matter. 
 Of this we will speak no more. 
 
 It is just because I am no saint that I am 
 grateful to you for lifting me above myself. 
 It may be so strangely is a man's dual 
 nature mixed that you could not do this 
 unless you had a lovely face ; but sure, but 
 doubly sure I am that you could never do 
 it unless you had a lovely soul.
 
 26 HIS LETTERS 
 
 It is late. Let me send this quickly, lest 
 it be too late to come to your hand to-night ;. 
 and let me write again to-morrow, for I only 
 live in you. 
 
 I will answer you fully about Camors. 
 There is much to say that I left unsaid. 
 Good-night ! Good-night ! 
 
 You have been to my door. I would that 
 I might die to-night. 
 
 Letter Tenth. 
 
 * 
 
 It is four o'clock in the morning. I can- 
 not sleep. I have been lying with my eyes 
 shut, looking at you. I have turned my 
 face due southeast, in the direction where 
 you are sleeping. I have murmured your 
 name, andj have tried with a great effort 
 to force my spirit through the walls of brick 
 and stone, that it might look down upon 
 you sleeping, and breathe upon your cheek. 
 It must be possible to do this. We are no 
 more children of the sun than we are crea- 
 tures of electricity, and the electric spark 
 needs no wire to run upon ; the viewless air 
 is wire enough. They will find it some day 
 that means of communion beyond the
 
 HIS LETTERS 27 
 
 barriers of sense. I have not found it yet, 
 or how could you have been so near to me 
 last night, and my heart not have burst with 
 the knowledge ? You have divined the se- 
 cret of my life. I have been from childhood 
 haunted, possessed with the passionate de- 
 sire to forget myself, to lose myself in the 
 thought of another. My life has been one 
 ardent, desperate, and at last hopeless quest 
 of something I could never find ; but when 
 love comes you know him. There is a seal 
 upon his forehead, and in his voice there is 
 a music that enthralls the body and the 
 soul. Ah, when love comes, death has no 
 terrors. What can death do to one that 
 laughs back at him and says, " Smite ! for I 
 have lived ! " 
 
 Not Heaven itself upon the past has power ; 
 
 But what has been has been, and I have had my hour. 
 
 My God ! when I think of Wednesday 
 night I want to die out of sheer ecstasy at 
 your incomparable goodness. Oh, had you 
 come in you would have found me breath- 
 less, prostrate on the floor ; and never 
 would I have risen until you had set one of 
 your slender feet upon my neck.
 
 aS HIS LETTERS 
 
 Later. What does my secret matter ? 
 Have I guessed yours ? Ah, tell me what 
 it is. Don't tantalize me by such questions 
 if you never mean to answer them. 
 
 Do you know why I cannot trust myself 
 to allude to certain words that you have 
 uttered in your last letters? I scarcely 
 dare to whisper them to my own heart. I 
 never do whisper them save in the dark. 
 Do you think that for one tear of yours I 
 would not give the reddest drops that gush 
 out of my heart? I can no more forget 
 them than I can forget my own identity. 
 I shall carry them with me to the grave ; 
 and I would disdain a heaven to which I 
 might not bear them with me. Oh, I have 
 wished of late that I too believed in a per- 
 sonal God, that I might pray to him to 
 bless you for your immeasurable sweetness 
 to me. You never can imagine what you 
 have done for me. You didn't understand 
 what I meant when I said that you could 
 do a hundred times more for me than I for 
 you. You had already begun to do it, and 
 now the work is fully done. 
 
 How beautiful your letters are ! It is
 
 HIS LETTERS 29 
 
 their exquisite unconsciousness which is so 
 fetching, so irresistible. You write like 
 that great lady of whom De Quincey talks, 
 who, without knowing the meaning of the 
 word rhetoric, wrote the lovely English 
 tongue in a way to make Addison seem 
 ponderous and stiff. 
 
 You ask me about C. He was not at all 
 a man to my taste. He never could get 
 very far above ground. The ideas were 
 very commonplace that he boomed 'forth 
 with a big- voice. But he could feel in- 
 
 o 
 
 tensely, and in that respect, at all events, he 
 was every inch a man. I happened to be 
 
 dining at Mrs. 's house when C. was 
 
 brought in and first introduced to her. I 
 glanced at them now and then. She had a 
 fixed look ; one saw that she was interested. 
 That fixed look, we know what came of 
 it; but at least in fazt partie a deux there 
 was no cheating. The cards were on the 
 table, the stakes were equal. It was not 
 a caprice against a life. She played the 
 game out to the end, and although the 
 waters have gone over her, I say, or rather 
 I said, that in one respect she was a finer
 
 3 HIS LETTERS 
 
 creature than P., who slew a man from 
 pure d&ceuvrement, as lightly, until the 
 very last, as thoughtlessly as she might 
 have thrust aside a dog. That was my 
 first thought, and if it made me very ireful, 
 it was because I felt certain that wherein 
 P. was lovable she must be just like 
 you. And you approved of her ! You, 
 then, would do such things, I thought. 
 Now I have more light. 
 
 I shivered at one sentence in your letter. 
 I will not tell you now what it was. 
 
 You have set me to thinking about 
 Camors, and about the strangeness of the 
 fact that in that story the woman should 
 be so much stronger and more virile, 
 yes, and braver than the man ! And then 
 I remembered that there lived once in 
 Rome a lady who was the prototype of her 
 that loved Camors. You are familiar, no 
 doubt, with the fact that Arria is a counter- 
 part of Feuillet's heroine. 
 
 You say you like my letters ; I am 
 ashamed of them. I fain would keep your 
 respect. It is because you are all ruth and 
 gentleness that you say you like them. Only
 
 HIS LETTERS 31 
 
 de Mussel's hand was fit to touch the page 
 that your deep eyes should gaze upon. If I 
 had that touch of his I would brush you as 
 with the wing of a humming-bird, and you 
 should smile and know not why. But he is 
 dead, and we that study him do but like 
 other babblers hurt where we would 
 soothe, and harm where we would heal. 
 Good-by. 
 
 I have not heard from you to-day, and 1 
 am worried and depressed. But it would 
 quite kill me if you were to write in charity. 
 
 Letter Eleventh. 
 
 I have just read your letter, your letters. 
 Ah, you are too good to me ! I hesitated to 
 open the envelope. I turned it over in my 
 fingers. "What will she say to me?" I 
 thought. " It would be so easy for her to 
 kill me with one word. But no," I said, 
 " she is too gentle to hold me blameworthy 
 for what I uttered in such a whirlwind of 
 excitement as I wonder that any man can 
 bear and live." One does not you, at least, 
 would not resent the outcries of a man in 
 a high fever. You would not rebuke him.
 
 3? HIS LETTERS 
 
 You would say, " Poor man, he raves," and 
 glide away. But yet, I thought, even in 
 delirium a man may innocently say some- 
 thing that jars upon the fiber of an ear in- 
 finitely more delicate than ours. 
 
 I read the letters. The first was balm to 
 me. Ah, there is no woman in the world 
 who can be so placable as you. I think 
 you would not hurt a fly that with an in- 
 stinct for security perched upon your slen- 
 der finger. 
 
 But the second the second I felt in an 
 instant that some chord had been struck 
 wrongly which chord? I have not found 
 it yet, but I will find it. 
 
 You told me things that I did not under- 
 stand your telling me, about the feelings of 
 other men. What have I to do with their 
 feelings ? Do you think mine like theirs ? 
 Why, there was a faint suggestion of the 
 very stroke that pierced when I got your 
 little note yesterday, in the afternoon. I 
 knew very well why many men would be 
 irresistibly attracted. I have eyes. I am 
 not blind. But I have something that they, 
 or some of them, at least, have not. It was
 
 HIS LETTERS 33 
 
 through a pathway which spok'e not to the 
 passions but to the soul that you had made 
 a willing thrall of me. Do you think that 
 the men who are merely conquered by your 
 physical attractiveness, however compulsive 
 it may be, are translated as I am ; that they 
 are made better, oh, so much better, by the 
 thought that they can talk to you ; that they 
 find dawning for them again that strange 
 light that never was on sea or land ? Don't 
 you see that the others love you for them- 
 selves, and that I am not thinking of my- 
 self at all ? Do you think men would die 
 for mere desire ? Oh, no ; it is only worship 
 that men die for. 
 
 Don't yoiK know there is one unerring 
 method of distinguishing between the men 
 who care only for the lovely shell which is 
 your body, and leave neglected and unprized 
 the sweet mysterious story which the shell 
 tells of the ocean whence it came and 
 whither it must go ? 
 
 Does it follow, because you have the 
 figure of Diana, and a fair face behind 
 which lurks a divine vitality, that all men 
 all must shut their eyes to that without
 
 34 HIS LETTERS 
 
 which you were only the most seductive of 
 all odalisques ? The touchstone is so ob- 
 vious that a child might see it. Indeed, I 
 think the soft eyes of a child might see it 
 first. 
 
 Why, there is all the difference in the 
 world between the hunger for possession 
 and the thirst to be possessed ! To have 
 one's mind, one's heart, one's soul preoccu- 
 pied, monopolized ; to think no thought, 
 thrill to no feeling that does not point to 
 her ; aye, and to crave high thoughts and 
 the noblest feelings because they alone 
 seem worthy of her, that absent, far-off, 
 hopeless you adore. There you have the 
 easy, decisive test. Most women never 
 could apply it. Their petty vanity about 
 their outside would come in. But you can, 
 I am sure that you can, for you are too 
 proud to be vain. The test is whether a 
 man teases her for perpetual presence, for 
 close contact ; or whether he cannot be too 
 grateful for communion with her mind and 
 with her heart. 
 
 What stabbed me in the beginning of the 
 note that I got yesterday, in the afternoon
 
 HIS LETTERS 35 
 
 I could' not read it then- -I have read it 
 now and well I understand its playfulness 
 you are most lovely when you play ; 
 what shocked me was that you seemed to 
 take all the outpourings of my heart for so 
 much comedy ; that you seemed to class me 
 with men whom, really, I look upon but as 
 so many stags, and who seem capable of see- 
 ing in the most perfect woman only the 
 female of their species. 
 
 You seemed you must forgive me, I 
 know now it was but seemed you seemed 
 to think me capable of soiling you in my 
 own heart, under the cowardly shield of a 
 comparison ; and you also seemed to say 
 that my view coincided with that of a despi- 
 cable idiot whose name I shall endeavor to 
 forget. And do you know why the iron 
 entered into my soul ? I said, she has 
 heard things about me. They convince her 
 that I only care for what most men care 
 for. She cannot judge me for herself. 
 And then I felt something of the madness 
 of despair, the madness that cries, " Let us 
 curse God and die ! " 
 
 A single word will partially express how
 
 3<5 HIS LETTERS 
 
 much I owe to you. Until I had begun to 
 dream of you, it was ten years since I had 
 read voluntarily a line of poetry. Think of 
 it ! For ten years I had looked upon the 
 imaginings of those interpreters between 
 earth and heaven as so many pretty lies. 
 Ah, I do not need to read the poets now ! 
 All they say has come back to me in a 
 torrent, a flood. 
 
 I will not breathe another syllable about 
 myself and my own feelings. They are not 
 worth it. I will do what I meant to do 
 when I began ; calmly and sagely address 
 myself to answering your questions ques- 
 tions for which I am very grateful, for 
 reasons that you can guess. 
 
 Camors? I did not answer that question 
 fully. Let me deliver a little lecture on 
 Camors. Imagine me an Oxford don, if 
 you please, with high waistcoat, coat of 
 formal cut, short, meager whiskers, the rest 
 of the face closely shorn, compressed and 
 important lips. 
 
 Messieurs et Mesdames : In Camors the 
 author has unquestionably drawn a highly 
 interesting figure, but has he proved his
 
 HIS LETTERS 37 
 
 case, that is the question ? M. Feuillet has 
 essayed to show [Is not this the true 
 soporific, academical manner ?] that the 
 code of honor is an inadequate substitute 
 for religion. But suppose he shows that it 
 is simply as strong and as weak as religion, 
 neither better nor worse ? M. Feuillet tells 
 us that the code of M. Camors worked well 
 enough until it was shivered by collision 
 with a great passion a great, you would 
 please to observe, not a little one. What 
 reason have we to suppose that in precisely 
 the same circumstances religion would have 
 been a more effective shield ? The whole 
 record of Christianity, ever .since the priest 
 first crept behind the throne of Con- 
 stantine, demonstrates the contrary. We 
 need not point to the long list of popes 
 that cared more for the clews to the heart 
 of a woman than for the keys of St. Peter. 
 Look rather at Abelard, that Camors of the 
 twelfth century, that wondrous doctor in 
 theology, that man who, until he began to 
 read lectures like this to a charming 
 woman, was indeed a saint on earth. So 
 M. Feuillet has proved nothing. He did
 
 38 HIS LETTERS 
 
 better with his other tragedy, the " Petite 
 Comtesse." 
 
 This is very nice and cogent, isn't it ? 
 But it doesn't explain to me why you 
 should have asked me the question. . . . 
 
 Letter Twelfth. 
 
 I know nothing about Isabella the 
 Second. I recalled Marguerite of Valois, 
 whom you insult by the comparison, 
 because she was the sweetest woman in a 
 century far better worth living in than this ; 
 and because one of .the most loyal-hearted 
 men in France went cheerfully to death for 
 her sake ; a fool, wasn't he ? 
 
 I burn your letters because they are 
 sacred to me. I burn them from the same 
 motive that makes it odious .to me, disgust- 
 ing to hear your name so much as men- 
 tioned by other men. You cannot under- 
 stand that. It seems funny to you. How 
 absurd you must think my letters. They 
 might be set with effect to some of the 
 mock-sentimental music in " Patience," if 
 you have not forgotten it. You are a 
 very accomplished surgeon, madame. You
 
 HIS LETTERS 39 
 
 know precisely how and when to apply the 
 caustic. I congratulate, you upon the skill 
 which testifies to your experience. You 
 make, however, a somewhat excessive use 
 of the remedy. A touch would have suf- 
 ficed. 
 
 Letter Thirteenth. 
 
 Don't you know what you did ? You 
 committed the crime of llse-majeste". You 
 sinned against yourself through me. You 
 accused me of insulting by comparison a 
 woman whom I adore, a woman whom I 
 know to be an angel. Oh, my God ! my 
 eyes swam over that first page, and I could 
 read the rest only by snatches. Don't you 
 see that I love you, and that you must not, 
 ah ! you must not play with me ? I don't 
 ask to see you, but oh, let me believe that 
 you believe in me ! 
 
 Ah', I have kissed this letter a thousand 
 times, and yet I was half sorry to get it. 
 You know " it works like madness in the 
 blood to be wroth with those you love." 
 And I was nursing the thought of such a 
 sweet revenge, such revenge as the angels
 
 40 HIS LETTERS 
 
 may take upon a mortal. " Ah," I thought, 
 " I will wring tears of contrition from those 
 sweet eyes. Wait a moment," I thought, 
 " I care not what she has said in the past, I 
 will do . that which will cause her never to 
 doubt in the future." 
 
 Oh, you stabbed me when you said that 
 man A. would think exactly as I thought. 
 Does he worship you ? Why, it was only 
 last night that I was telegraphed to dine 
 with a lot of men. That man L., a good 
 man enough, was one of them. But I said, 
 " He will be sure to mention her name, and 
 I cannot bear it." So I declined the invita- 
 tion. It is a horrible thing for a man to 
 hear anything said by common men of a 
 woman of his own caste. And how infin- 
 itely more heart-scorching is it if she is the 
 only woman in all the earth to him ! 
 
 Almost all night I lay awake reading 
 your last two letters. There are three now, 
 thank God ! You will let me keep these, 
 will you not ? I have them, Heaven knows, 
 by heart, but there is a faint perfume about 
 them which intoxicates me. 
 
 But don't you see, dear, how deadly a
 
 HIS LETTERS 41 
 
 wound you gave me in return for my humble 
 prayer for forgiveness, when you accused 
 me of comparing an angel with a dreadful 
 woman, and put me on the level with a cad ? 
 But if I did pain you, oh, forgive me ! I did 
 not dare to tell you that I loved you. Those 
 words that Shelley robbed me of have been 
 always on my lips : 
 
 One word is too often profaned 
 For me to profane it. 
 
 God bless you ! He will. It is with you 
 and such as you that he peoples heaven ; or 
 else let me be banished. 
 
 Letter Fourteenth. 
 
 I am in heaven. Now I cannot write for 
 joy. If I drop to earth to-morrow, it will 
 be to worship her who sent me skyward for 
 a day. 
 
 Ah, yes ; I can sleep to-night sleep, that 
 sweet counterfeit of death. I bless you, I 
 am on my knees to you. 
 
 Letter Fifteenth. 
 
 SATURDAY NIGHT. 
 I came down from the clouds to-night. I
 
 42 HIS LETTERS 
 
 would not stay there until to-morrow. You 
 see the earth-born are restless in the ether. 
 They breathe not well in too fine air. I 
 prefer the Elysian fields. Here at least you 
 can find papyrus, and a swan's quill, and the 
 ink of violets. That is why the gods are 
 far less happy in their isolation on Olympus, 
 than the tenants of the blissful islands 
 where swift-footed Achilles, and Diomed, 
 Athena's darling, are. 
 
 Ah, that page, one page in your letter f 
 it drowned me in delight. You knew it 
 would ; you meant to drown me. 
 
 You will not think it strange when I tell 
 you that I love you so deeply and so truly 
 that I have often, in my thoughts, given 
 you to other men dead men that would 
 have been worthy of your smile. Once I 
 gave you to Alexander, in the hour of his 
 radiance, at Issus, while he still had the 
 heart, as well as the prowess, of a demi-god. 
 Ah, had it been you, and not that other 
 whom he found in the tent of Artaxerxes, 
 he would never have sent you to your 
 father. He would have found such mag- 
 nanimity impossible.
 
 HIS LETTERS 43 
 
 At- another time I dealt with you in a 
 fashion still more adequate. Then it was 
 Julius that I thought of, the fateful, invin- 
 cible, inscrutable ; the famous man of all 
 this world. I could see his grave face lifted 
 from the tablets where his hand still held 
 the stilus. I could see his eyes blaze as 
 they fell on one infinitely nobler, aye, and 
 more fateful than that sweet serpent of the 
 Nile. " But no," I thought, " I will not give 
 her to any man of that type. A poet would 
 appreciate her better. I will let Catullus see 
 her," I said; "yes, Catullus in his youth, 
 before Lesbia had taught him to think evil 
 of women. Then, indeed, he would have 
 made the ' Epithalamium' a matchless mas- 
 terpiece." 
 
 On the whole, though, I concluded to 
 give you to Chastelard. You would have 
 pitied him. You are not like that deadly 
 witch of Scotland whose white bosom hid 
 only a stone. You could never have stood 
 by and seen him go to his death, and not 
 have made one cry, one moan of agony, 
 responsive to the reproachful yearning of 
 his latest upward look,
 
 44 HIS LETTERS 
 
 How glad I am these men are dead, for 
 there are limits to unselfishness ! Luckily, 
 there is no one living that is fit for you to 
 touch with your gloved hand. 
 
 Until to-day I had thought that the sweet- 
 est thing I ever read, or dreamed I had 
 read, in a lady's letter, was a small word of 
 four letters that slipped, as it seemed, un- 
 premeditated from her pen. I am not likely 
 to forget the context. It ran like this : 
 " What has happened to us, dear, do you 
 know?" The italics are mine. Long I 
 pondered whether the word were meant or 
 no. Being pessimistic I finally answered 
 in the negative. But, for all that, it would 
 keep ringing in my ears. But what do 
 you think happened to me when I heard 
 from the lips of the same lady that I might 
 speak frankly often the only word that 
 speaks my heart ? It matters not with what 
 wistful and tender ingenuity one may seek 
 to suggest the deepest and most devouring 
 of the passions. There is no periphrasis, 
 no synonym that can compass the full sig- 
 nificance of the simple word, I love you 
 the one word which, for one long second, as
 
 HIS LETTERS 45 
 
 with a jet of ecstasy, surrenders, empties, 
 exhausts, denudes the soul. 
 
 Your hygienic counsels are highly edi- 
 fying. Would I like you to take care of 
 me? Why, yes, if I were quite sure that 
 the nurse would prove indulgent, and that 
 the physician would make a free use of 
 stimulants. I should hate to be fed on 
 gruel and kept at a low temperature. So 
 your rules are strict. I care not though 
 they were constrictive even ; but I never 
 could comply unless the author would per- 
 sonally supervise the processes. Then, I 
 am sure they could not fail. There is 
 nothing, I think, ails me that a wise leech 
 might not cure. And by the way, I love 
 not that old man who was allowed to trace 
 out the tell-tale lines upon your palm ; aye, 
 ami touch the lovely hillock that swells just 
 below the thumb. I trust he, too, is dead. 
 He ought to be. The men also that have 
 danced with you ; I have killed them all in 
 my fierce mind. As for that natatory cos- 
 tume, if any man but Neptune has beheld 
 it, I hope he got the cramp and sank. Oh, 
 I have a dark suspicion ! . . . But I bias-
 
 4<> HIS LETTERS 
 
 pheme. Alas ! you made me, you deliber- 
 ately made me. There are a dozen dif- 
 ferent men in me, and you know how to 
 dominate them all. But one chord you 
 alone can touch : you alone can make me 
 think of summer, of the songs of birds, the 
 scent of gardens, the haunting accents of 
 the poets, all the beauty and the mystery of 
 life. I might love you in a hundred ways, 
 but it is for this that I adore. It is when I 
 think of this that I best measure the pro- 
 foundness of my debt to you. I love the 
 peri, she that stands at heaven's gate dis- 
 consolate, even better than I love the 
 woman. And also, when I think of this, 
 and forecast the tragic chances and more 
 woeful changes of man's lot, I question 
 whether life can ever hold a better hour for 
 me than this. That was a high teaching of 
 the Stoics, that it ill becomes a man to stand 
 with front lowered, at death's mercy ; but 
 that af his own judgment seat he should 
 decide when he would die. It surely were 
 the part of wisdom to select the hour 
 when one is loftiest and happiest. But 
 alas ! those austere, clear-eyed ones never
 
 HIS LETTERS 47 
 
 could have been in love ; they knew not 
 with what desperation a lover clings to 
 life. 
 
 Once a lady asked me what words in all 
 my letters I thought that she liked best. 
 Were they not those four words in which I 
 had defined her mind's rare quality, the 
 motive that swayed her, the key to her life ? 
 Not in vain had I probed her, but with a 
 fond, sure instinct. From me the Sphinx 
 cannot lock up her riddle. I play GEdipus 
 too well. I guessed it, and therefore it was 
 that I escaped if indeed my escape be cer- 
 tain the fate of them that missed the se- 
 cret. Is the lady answered rightly? It 
 was a wise Russian who said, " The head 
 vaunteth a freedom which the wiser heart 
 disclaims." I thank you for translating it. 
 It had else been to me a sealed oracle. I 
 am glad that you are more learned than I ; 
 for I would have you in all things loftier 
 and larger, as well I knew you were in most. 
 I can see best when I look up. But in one 
 thing you can never come within gun-shot, 
 eye-shot of me ! You can never feel for me 
 a tenth part of what I feel for you. You
 
 48 
 
 will never, never, never say to me what I 
 say now I love you. 
 
 Letter Sixteenth. 
 
 Your letter of Saturday has this moment 
 reached me. But for one word in it I should 
 be willing, I should wish, to die now ; for 
 well I know that I shall never be so happy 
 again. You are going away. Good God ! 
 can you suspect what that word means to 
 me ? And yet I am glad of an opportunity 
 of proving what my feeling is for you ; also 
 glad to suffer by anything that you wish to 
 do. Oh, when you told me about your 
 health you wrung my heart ! Why would 
 I hurt you, I that love you ? I that would 
 even be content never to see you, never to 
 write another word to you, if only every 
 night and morning some strange pre- 
 science would tell me that you were well 
 and happy. Oh, you can't believe me. 
 It is the curse of my wayward life that 
 now, when I would give my soul to be 
 believed, I am not. And yet people go 
 to church and pretend to believe in Mary 
 of Magdala, and they will not see that
 
 HIS LETTERS 49 
 
 in the throes of a great passion a man too 
 can be born again. 
 
 Why, the fools and blind drove Hugo's 
 " Marion de Lorme " off the stage, because 
 they could see nothing but coarseness in a 
 line that might have been murmured long 
 since beside the sea of Galilee : 
 
 Et F amour ma refait une virginite. 
 
 Of course you have heard things about 
 me ; you may hear more. Some of them 
 may have been true, too, once I know not 
 but they are not true now, not now. 
 Oh, I have lots of enemies thank God for 
 that ! They have kept me alive by quick- 
 ening the instinct of warfare, until a feeling 
 fell on me so incomparably higher that I 
 forgot all about them. 
 
 How could I speak of you to A.? It 
 makes my heart beat like a flail even to 
 hear your name mentioned, and I know 
 that I grow red to hear it. I despise A., 
 and he knows it. I have seen him but once 
 for a second in a year, and then, when he 
 put out a hand, I gave him a slow single 
 finger. L. is a very different man, but him 
 I see as little as possible. I have seen him
 
 $0 HIS LETTERS 
 
 but thrice in a twelve-month, and then for a 
 reason not directly connected with himself. 
 
 I am puzzled to know what question it 
 is about your art which you Will put to me, 
 and which I am to answer, right or wrong. 
 
 As you yourself do not know the meaning 
 of your pictures as well as I do, it is a hun- 
 dred to one that I guess right. 
 
 Ah, a great sadness clutches me you 
 will never care for me ! 
 
 Letter Seventeenth. 
 
 WEDNESDAY, DAWN. 
 
 Did I not divine you, long since, far-off, 
 to be an angel ? Did I not know that you 
 maligned yourself when you told me that 
 you were not " very gentle " ? What but 
 an angel of gentleness and heavenly com- 
 passion would have had the tender fore- 
 thought to provide me, in that precious 
 little note, with a talisman a talisman 
 against the doubts, misgivings, loneliness, 
 sickness of hope deferred, that would have 
 made those weeks of your absence a very 
 hell to me. Now that I have that, and can 
 clasp it, kiss it, stare at it until my brain
 
 &IS LETTERS 51 
 
 reels, my eyes swim, why ! I can be almost 
 happy. 
 
 There is still one thing a little thing 
 that, in your boundless kindness, you might 
 do for poor me. There must be in existence 
 somewhere a photograph, a photograph of 
 yourself, or at least of your portrait, of the 
 sweetest thing that breathes upon this earth. 
 Oh give it to me, give it ! It will help me to 
 bear what is to come. I know well how a 
 splendidly vitalized woman is libeled by a 
 photograph ; but it will be better, so much 
 better than nothing. And with the fires 
 darting from my own eyes, as they probe it, 
 I can inject vitality and splendor into it. 
 Don't say you can't, will not. Do it, do it, 
 for the sake of him whose life-blood you 
 have drained a hundred times. 
 
 I once heard someone say that you had 
 a sweet little ear. Do you think I did not 
 guess it, with all its deep significance ? 
 Ah, nature fashioned you in her fondest, 
 maddest mood. In a thrill of terror lest 
 the earth should be dispeopled, she evoked 
 you, to reassure herself ! 
 
 That promised summer night! It floats
 
 5* HIS LETTERS 
 
 in my enchanted vision ever. I had often 
 dreamed of it, dreamed as we dream of 
 heaven, long before I had any hope that it 
 could ever be. Ah, to sit by your side near 
 the water, to see the wind play with your 
 hair, to watch with fond, furtive glances 
 the heaving of your bosom, to drink the 
 soft tones of your voice, to gaze with you 
 over the waves, not more inscrutable than 
 are my darling's eyes, or into a sky less 
 fathomless for all its depths, than my affec- 
 tion ! And, then, perhaps all at once 
 our eyes would meet, our hands would 
 clutch and scorch each other, for one 
 moment you might love me, and our souls 
 would rush together at the meeting of our 
 lips. That picture, oh, that picture ! when 
 I see it I can write no more. My hand 
 trembles ; I can write no more to-night. 
 
 Letter Eighteenth. 
 
 Those terrible days, Thursday and Fri- 
 day, when I knew not even where you were ! 
 But I will not say another word about it. I 
 shudder to think that, shortly, you may say, 
 " Why, this is getting to be a terrible bore !
 
 HIS LETTERS 53 
 
 Does the man think that I have nothing to 
 do but write letters to him and listen to his 
 driveling?" That is sure to come ; let me 
 not hasten it. 
 
 I have a letter written on square white 
 sheets ; a sweet letter, though there was a 
 drop of bitter. It spoke of a surmise which 
 had "swept over your consciousness invol- 
 untarily." When I first read that, I wanted 
 to seize the pen and use it as a knife. But 
 I have sworn never, never to say one harsh 
 word to you. If I speak now, it is with 
 nothing but tenderness and sorrow in my 
 heart. You will continue then to accuse 
 me of baseness ? I say it not angrily, but 
 softly. Does not such a surmise imply that, 
 for a moment, at least you have believed 
 me to be telling you untruths ? It is not 
 by lies I wish to win you ; you may attract, 
 but you cannot keep a heart by such de- 
 vices. I could not love a woman such as 
 well, never mind if I felt tempted to be 
 untruthful to her. Don't you think that 
 soon or late a man's wounded self-respect 
 would hunger to avenge itself ? But, dear, 
 I have said a hundred times more than I
 
 54 HIS LETTERS 
 
 meant to say. I do not believe you thought 
 it ; I do not, really. If I did, I should 
 choke. I could not speak, I could not write 
 to you ; for how could one write what is not 
 believed ? 
 
 And now, since I have begun so badly, 
 may I go on and tell you something which 
 weighs like a pall upon my mind ? You 
 have asked me some searching questions; 
 that is your prerogative ; but let me just put 
 tentatively a little one on my own account. 
 You need not answer it. Indeed, your 
 silence would be an explicit answer. Let 
 me tell you of a thought that clove me like 
 an arrow, as I lay awake one night, since 
 your departure. Suddenly, I thought, " She 
 is too wise ! " I sprang up and got some of 
 your letters. I ran over them with a new 
 purpose and a most penetrating eye. Every 
 now and then I marked a passage, and when 
 I had finished, I went back and scrutinized 
 those passages with the utmost care. Ah, 
 never, I think, was microscope with greater 
 power invoked to give up the inmost mean- 
 ing of a woman's words. I compared these 
 passages with some that I remembered in
 
 HIS LETTERS 55 
 
 former letters of yours ; and then I said to 
 myself, " There is no German metaphysician 
 can evolve the myriad turns and phases of 
 one passion from the depths of his inner 
 consciousness ! " What then ? Why, then 
 comes the question which, posed, answers 
 itself : " How many times has she been 
 madly, utterly in love ? " To me it is an 
 interesting question, because I know from 
 sad experience that a man can love but 
 once ; though he should not be blamed for 
 mistaking the dawn for the noon sky. But 
 I know this, that one man, not devoid of 
 imagination either, could never have written 
 certain words, except in the last six weeks 
 of his life. Don't pay any attention to this 
 question. That, as you once told me, is the 
 best way. 
 
 Don't write to me ; I am miserable. 
 
 Letter Nineteenth. 
 
 I am writing to you at five o'clock, in the 
 morning. I have been restless ; perhaps 
 in written speech I shall find a sort of 
 calm. 
 
 You said in one of your letters that you
 
 5<5 HIS LETTERS 
 
 might have to pause, to stop, to chill me ; 
 in another, that the day might "come when I 
 would hate you. That day can never come. 
 But I passed through many phases of feeling, 
 yesterday, and at last, when I had to go to 
 bed without a line from you, I was chilled 
 indeed. It had seemed impossible to me 
 that you could leave me with nothing but 
 a telegram that, taken by itself, distressed 
 me. I could not be so unkind to you. 
 
 In your Monday's letter you forbade me 
 to write to you. I read the words carefully 
 again last night before I burned the note. I 
 burned every scrap of your last letters last 
 night. I haven't a line of yours now. I 
 know this is what you wish, but I did it 
 in a gust of anger, and I have been so sorry 
 since. Oh, I have such a bad temper! If 
 you knew how bad it is, you would detest 
 me. But it is dreadful to be chilled ! If 
 I must die, let me be scorched to death. 
 Ah ! I think that you, at least, would feel 
 some pity if you knew what an agony 
 it is to be in love. To pant and writhe 
 incessantly with hope unsatisfied ; to stretch 
 out one's arms wildly, mutely, and clasp
 
 HIS LETTERS 57 
 
 nothing. Oh, you cannot guess even 
 what I mean. You are an icicle; you have 
 told me so. You must be, or you could not 
 talk of chilling a man in such a plight as 
 mine. 
 
 Is it because I tell you that I love you, 
 love you ; that for the first time in my life I 
 know what love is ; is that the reason that 
 you say, " I may have to chill you " ? 
 
 Oh, why, why don't you put me out of 
 my pain ? I wouldn't let a dog suffer as 
 you make me. 
 
 Later, Eight d clock. Four hours more ! 
 The postman has come and gone. Still 
 not a line from you. My God ! don't you 
 ever mean to write to me again ? Must I 
 live through another day like yesterday ? 
 Have mercy. 
 
 Letter Twentieth. 
 
 I have your letter. Heavens, how much 
 I have to say ! Shall I say it well ? I 
 know not, and I care not ; only let me say 
 it quickly. First, let me whisper to you 
 no, let me darken the room first ; there 
 give me your ear, though it is hard to do,
 
 5 8 HIS LETTERS 
 
 for I am on my knees, not by your side. 
 Let me whisper to you, oh, so low that you 
 yourself shall scarcely hear it, that for me 
 you have no secret, no surprise. When I 
 saw your pictures they produced an extra- 
 ordinary effect on me. I pierced, riddled 
 them with my eyes. At last I thought I 
 guessed the secret of their strangely complex, 
 mysterious, resistless power over my imagi- 
 nation. "Why," I thought, "she holds the 
 brush as of a vestal virgin who has dreamed 
 she was Faustina. My God, what a celes- 
 tial, maddening, destroying combination ? 
 But it cannot be. Such things don't 
 happen, don't exist except in the crater of 
 your own volcanic imagination. You have 
 given woman a million charms in your 
 fancy, to which she has not, in fact, the 
 slightest title, and now, just because this 
 one, whom you have not even seen, exerts, 
 in her art alone, on your keen, quivering 
 senses for they are keen enough, they are 
 that a strange, nameless sorcery, you must 
 straightway proceed to credit her with in- 
 credible fascinations, which the Greeks, 
 in their wildest ecstasy, never dared as-
 
 HIS LETTERS 59 
 
 cribe to but one goddess. . . And so you 
 haunted me ; and I have asked myself 
 strange, foolish questions ; and I have laid 
 traps for you ; oh, such obvious traps, they 
 could not check your little foot more than 
 a second. At the worst you would only 
 feel that you had tripped over a violet ; 
 and you did trip over one. Ah, but I 
 think you saw it, and laughed gayly ! . . 
 " Oh yes," I said, " she is the Sphinx to all 
 other men, but I ha.ve guessed her riddle, 
 and therefore it may be that I shall live 
 and not die." But presently came doubt 
 again. " Outside of myths and legends," I 
 said to myself, "no such bliss could come to 
 a man ". . . and then I rushed to the other 
 extreme. I was angry with you for having 
 actually made me believe in an impossi- 
 bility. I fiercely, demanded, " How many 
 times has she madly, utterly loved ? " For 
 I thought, " Now, if she has had lovers, she 
 will be angry and will show her anger. 
 But if ... if she has not loved my God, 
 it is impossible ! Yet if ... admitting 
 the impossibility a moment, she will give 
 me a strange, enigmatic answer; she will
 
 60 HIS LETTERS 
 
 not be angry or reproachful ; she will 
 simply say to herself, ' Ah, he is puz- 
 zled, and no wonder ; I am puzzled my- 
 self.'" 
 
 But scarcely had the letter gone before 
 I tried to overtake it. I looked at your 
 portrait, at its mouth and chin ; and I 
 knew that, should I get that ambiguous 
 answer, I should be conscience-smitten; that 
 never, never should I entirely get over it. 
 That was what I me^ant when I told you 
 that I felt as if I had committed that sin 
 against the Holy Ghost, and it was sacri- 
 lege to dare to love a saint ; and yet I do 
 dare to love her a million, million times for 
 that treasure her heart, which she keeps in 
 store for him she loves. Oh, darling, dar- 
 ling, I am fainting ! do you mean to give 
 it to me ? Tell me, tell me ! see me only 
 when you like, as far off as you will, but 
 tell me instantly, for God's sake, that of 
 late you have meant, that you do mean, 
 some day, to give it to me. Oh, tell me, 
 tell me ; do you want me to die of love at 
 this moment ? I am dying. . . .
 
 HIS LETTERS 61 
 
 Letter Twenty-first. 
 
 I wrote you a long letter last night, but 
 this morning I won't send it, lest it should 
 give you some pain. It was a cry of agony 
 and of farewell. I meant to send back 
 with it that little thing which I had worn 
 all the days, and kept crushed against my 
 mouth and nostrils all the nights. >But 
 when I found it close to my mouth this 
 morning I could not send it back just yet. 
 
 But I cannot write much this morning. 
 I am trying, trying to understand why God 
 permits a woman like yourself to live, who 
 is at once so lovely and so cruel. What 
 crime have I committed that I should be 
 made the victim of your cruelty ? No, I 
 cannot write just yet. I am trying to rec- 
 oncile the words you speak with other 
 things that seem to show a tender heart. 
 
 Don't you think, on the whole, you had 
 better unchain me and let me go ? I am 
 going away on Friday, at ten that is, I 
 leave my house at that hour. How much 
 do you really care, I wonder. How much 
 can a woman, who speaks such words de-
 
 62 HIS LETTERS 
 
 liberately, care about any human being ex. 
 cept herself ? 
 
 Letter Twenty-second. 
 
 TUESDAY. 
 
 Ah, yesterday will live forever in my 
 memory ! Your letter ! Such a letter ! 
 What would you r do with me ? Do you 
 want to destroy me in advance? Is that a 
 wise economy of love ? But you have 
 never said you loved me. You don't know 
 whether you do or not. That- was a dread- 
 ful word to me. I must have that . . . 
 nothing less. Well, I know that there are 
 other things you could give ; things I 
 would sell my soul to get. But seest thou 
 not ; could I but gain thy heart, I should 
 not need to sell my soul to get them ? 
 They would all be mine then forever, inde- 
 feasibly, unshakably. As things are, it was 
 an appalling truth that you uttered, and 
 don't think I have not foreboded it. Ah, 
 your words, "To-morrow you may do or 
 say or think something that shall rob you 
 of your power and me of an illusion." Oh, 
 perhaps I have done that already in the
 
 HIS LETTERS 63 
 
 little space since those words fell. If I had 
 your heart, nothing I could do or say or 
 think could dislodge me ; for at worst it 
 could be but a blunder, repented of as soon 
 as done. 
 
 How then am I to win the heart which is 
 still free ? It must be free, since it would 
 instantly recognize the loss of freedom ? I 
 can only do it by convincing you beyond 
 the possibility of misconception that I love 
 you better than I love myself. I must win 
 it by self-sacrifice ; there is no other way. 
 Oh, I don't think that my self-sacrifice 
 would win the laurels of Philistia; my 
 notion of altruism would seem to the 
 Philistines, I imagine, quite indistinguish- 
 able from naughtiness. 
 
 I really do not believe you know that if 
 some day in a moment of feminine soft- 
 ness and ineffable pity, you gave your love 
 to me, you would do yourself the least 
 harm in the world. Perhaps I should 
 account it the noblest of impulses. If a 
 man doesn't thirst day and night to pos- 
 sess, in the completest sense of the word, 
 the woman he pretends to love, he does not
 
 64 HIS LETTERS 
 
 love her. It is only in the time and cir- 
 cumstances that one can test the depth and 
 force of his unselfishness. Do you remem- 
 ber telling me, in one of those burned 
 letters, that a woman who envied you your 
 beauty and your intellect, and I know not 
 what besides, said to someone, who told 
 you, " As for the fair Heloise she invited 
 him, flattered him, completely charmed and 
 dazzled him, and so, in art, he is her 
 friend." That you had charmed and daz- 
 zled was so true ; the woman's instinct 
 was unerring ; nothing but the cold facts 
 could perplex, baffle, and confound her. 
 Who would believe that I had not been 
 at your house, or in Capua, or the Lord 
 knows where ? that you do not know me ; 
 that we have not met ? ... It is my 
 business, then, as he that loves you, to 
 do that which you are too generous to 
 suggest, and to deny myself that on which 
 I have been feeding ever since you went 
 away the hope of seeing you immediately 
 after your return. The cackling and the 
 babbling will soon pass away. In three 
 weeks, at furthest, they will have put all
 
 HIS LETTERS 65 
 
 their prying, spiteful questions, and they 
 will have got their answer. Then, if by 
 that time you have not forgotten me, I 
 will implore you not to punish me because 
 I loved you better than myself, but to let 
 me come and look at you, as I now look 
 at your picture, perhaps ... to take your 
 hand. . . . 
 
 Letter Twenty-third. 
 
 One hour after I posted a letter yes- 
 terday I would have let a hand be lopped 
 off to recover it ! I do not write, my pen is 
 driven by the mood of the moment. There 
 is something in my brain that forces me, if 
 I speak at all, so to speak that words shall 
 seem things, realities, and that a mood shall 
 live upon the paper even as it lives in me. 
 So in certain moods I needs must say 
 words that shock and horrify. . . Ah, 
 your moods all ought to be transcribed, 
 when you write to one who cares for you, 
 for they are all beautiful and lofty. Even 
 your kiss would be that of an angel, but 
 with me it is not so, and of some moods of 
 mine you shall never more behold a sign.
 
 66 HIS LETTERS 
 
 In these letters that came to me this 
 morning and that I have read with tears, 
 you asked me to swear on the honor of a 
 man who wishes to respect himself, that I 
 will never again write to you letters like 
 those I sent to you on the morning when 
 you went away. I had already sworn ; 
 now I repeat the oath. But that is not all 
 I swear. In one of those dear letters you 
 say a word that flew straight to my heart, 
 to all that is left of generous and noble in 
 my nature. You said, " let me lean upon 
 you." " O God!" I cried, "how can she 
 lean upon me unless I make myself some- 
 thing better? By Heaven, I will try!" 
 Now listen ; I swear to you that never 
 again, whatever may be my thoughts, will 
 I say to you by letter, or should I ever 
 see you, by word of mouth, a syllable that 
 I would not have my mother hear ; not 
 one ! not one ! Oh, believe me, there are 
 still in me some possibilities of grandeur, 
 but you, you only can evoke them. I 
 am going to give you a consummate and 
 decisive and incredible proof of what I am 
 capable of doing in the way of self-abase-
 
 HIS LETTERS 67 
 
 ment. For days I have been dizzy with 
 the thought that perhaps I should see 
 you soon. Well, I renounce it ! Were I 
 to see you now now, or until I have 
 gained more self-control, and forced my- 
 self to think of you as a saint only you 
 could never, never lean on me. I want you 
 to think of me with honor and with implicit 
 trust. Oh, it must be better, better, better 
 in the end, when one must die, to know 
 that one has been a martyr, than to have 
 plunged in earthly bliss. 
 
 I read thee deeply, truly, my beloved. 
 It is only on the lovely surface that you 
 are one of the women who madden and 
 enslave. At heart, at heart you are a 
 seraph imprisoned thus I know not how 
 and I know, yes, I foresee, that you would 
 hate yourself and abhor me, if on awaken- 
 ing, some morning, you should find dust 
 upon your wings. Not through me shall 
 one fleck rest there, not one fleck, no, not 
 one. 
 
 Later. You have asked me another of 
 your searching questions. Oh, what an 
 adorable intellect is yours ! This one I
 
 68 ///5 LETTERS 
 
 will try to answer ; and I will do it, as I 
 will always write hereafter, in words that 
 a child might read. What an exquisitely 
 sensitive and delicate instrument is your 
 heart ! I used to think mine sensitive, but 
 it is a dull, dense thing to yours. One 
 word more before I follow that probing 
 question to the deep place where it is quiv- 
 ering. What is the past to me ? to you ? 
 I simply never lived till now. I cannot 
 conceive myself living in a world which you 
 have ceased to glorify. I am nothing, 
 know nothing but the present and the fu- 
 ture, and they are what you choose to make 
 them. You are the first, the only woman I 
 ever saw the only mortal thing embody- 
 ing what I knew and felt must exist some- 
 where the beauteous, mystic combination 
 that haunts us on the convases of the 
 Renaissance ; the being at once ethereal- 
 ized and carnalized ; the divine mystery 
 that has the body of a lovely woman, and 
 yet whose wings are fully grown, Oh, 
 until one has seen those wings growing and 
 growing there he has not lived, he was 
 not born.
 
 HIS LETTERS 69 
 
 And yet one delaying word ! Of course 
 I want you to pour out all moods to me. 
 Why, that is a kind of love, the best kind, 
 and I will be so grateful for it, and try to 
 feel that such love is enough. Never think 
 that I would wish to cramp or dwarf or 
 stifle you, or check with a word or thought 
 one of your sweet, wayward fluctuations. It 
 would never enter into my head to wish to 
 "adapt you to myself." Why, it is not my- 
 self I love at all it's you. I will 'prove it 
 to you in a memorable way ; I will " force 
 myself to have strength," you shall see. 
 
 And now that question, " Do I think 
 marriage, or the same thing, kills love 
 always?" I will at least answer truthfully, 
 first from the man's point of view ; then I 
 will try to seize the woman's, though for 
 me that will be difficult. Granting the ex- 
 istence in a man of an organization suf- 
 ficiently delicate by nature, and sufficiently 
 enriched and attuned by cultivation to ap- 
 preciate a woman of absolute refinement I 
 assert, with perfect confidence, that whether 
 or no fruition strikes the death-knell of that 
 which sought it depends upon the woman.
 
 ?o HIS LETTERS 
 
 If what such a man as I have indicated 
 feels for a given woman be a mere caprice, 
 or any of the little passions that have their 
 root in curiosity, vanity, or mere desire, 
 there can be no doubt whatever that poses- 
 sion means a more or less rapid, but in any 
 case inevitable, refrigeration and decay. 
 But whose fault is it that the man felt only 
 one of those emotions that, by the law of 
 their existence, are easily, quickly satisfied ? 
 It is the woman's fault ; she reaps as she 
 has sown. 
 
 The other day, ten days ago, a sudden 
 impulse made me take up a little tract that 
 hitherto I had not cared to read, and that I 
 trust your eyes will never look upon the 
 " Kreutzer Sonata." I went through it 
 carefully, and laid it down with a sigh ; for 
 here was a case, it seemed to me, where the 
 heart knew not its own bitterness, divined 
 not why it was so sad. And yet the man 
 who could write " My Religion " deserved 
 to know what love is, and to have been in 
 turn beloved. But, in fact, nothing was 
 more clear to me than that Tolstoi has 
 never been in love. Having got this clew
 
 - HIS LETTERS 71 
 
 by intuition, I went back and tested it in 
 a hundred sorry and shabby conjunctures 
 where, as he averred, mutual disgust and 
 loathing were the sad sequel of desire. There 
 was not one of these in which one could not 
 see that the man would have acted other- 
 wise had it been love he felt instead of its 
 poor counterfeit ; had he thought always 
 of her and of himself never, or only for 
 short and repented intervals. Ah, when a 
 man truly loves a woman, he cannot bear 
 the thought that she should lose through 
 him, even for a second, her self-esteem. 
 What were all delights, the most madden- 
 ing, compared with the undying agony 
 of such a thought ? Above all, I noticed 
 in Tolstoi's sketch a strange blindness to 
 the fact that it is when a woman has 
 been kindest that a man needs not only 
 the devotion, but the wisdom and tact of 
 an archangel, if she is not to shrink from 
 him ... a little. But I must pause and 
 cool my style or I shall shortly grow half 
 guilty in my thoughts again. But how 
 would it be with a woman, with a supreme 
 woman, a woman of genius like yourself, for
 
 72 HIS LETTERS 
 
 instance ? Ah, here I must speak with the 
 utmost doubt and diffidence. Could her 
 love outlive fruition ? Admitting that it was 
 real love, the largest, the most complex, at 
 once the most ardent and divinest, I cannot 
 speak with certainty, but, alas, I fear that 
 hers that yours would not. For it is 
 plain that in such a case the reverse of what 
 we were just saying would be true. Her 
 constancy of will and of desire would depend 
 upon the man and what man living, or that 
 ever lived, has been endowed with an organi- 
 zation so exquisite that it could satisfy the 
 delicacy, even if it could the fervor of her 
 own ? There is no such man there never 
 was and it is a wise instinct that prompts 
 certain women to shrink with horror from 
 the hour of possession ; for, for them it will 
 strike almost certainly the knell of passion 
 which dead, affection will soon languish 
 and what then would be left for the men 
 who loved them but the grave ? 
 
 Oh, I thank you for the portrait. I have 
 pored over it long. I shall not tell you what 
 I see in it, but the old man was almost as 
 wise as I. I see where it is inadequate, but
 
 HIS LETTERS 73 
 
 it is divinely lovely ; and yet I have re- 
 strained myself from pressing it wildly to 
 my lips. I have sworn not to kiss it, and 
 therefore I am holding the picture with 
 a firm hand, at a safe distance. Fear not, 
 beloved, and think not that I say this jest- 
 ingly. I will be strong, and you shall lean 
 on me. But will you not say one sweet word 
 to encourage and thank me ? 
 
 Letter Twenty-fourth. 
 
 A boy ! what poignant flattery ! Would 
 to God I were, if I could get the boy's 
 heart back again, his trust and faith ! But 
 you will not help me call it back again. 
 You will not give the little thing with which 
 a boy's heart is satisfied ; little to you, but 
 not to me to whom, of late, everything is 
 symbol. 
 
 Loyal to you, loyal to you ? That you 
 could say that implies a doubt. These 
 doubts destroy me. 
 
 Ah, I see the certainty that you are about 
 to escape my importunate letters Good 
 God ! I suppose you class them with others 
 that you receive daily is already having
 
 74 HIS LETTERS 
 
 upon me the dividing effect of distance. 
 You will let me down gently. You will 
 refrigerate by merciful degrees ; and at last, 
 when you are fifteen hundred miles away, 
 you will tell me that on the whole and con- 
 sidering all things, it might be well to let 
 this correspondence cease. 
 
 I can bear the stroke ; I have expected it. 
 
 It doesn't surprise me in the least that 
 you should say, " When we meet I shall be 
 of ice; expect nothing, hope nothing. You 
 will hate me." I have never supposed that 
 you were really anything but ice ; that your 
 feelings were anywhere except in your head. 
 I never, in my sober moments, expected any- 
 thing, hoped anything. And if you should 
 ask me in a perfunctory way to come and 
 see you, I should know that you did not 
 mean it, and that at heart you would rather 
 that I stayed away. 
 
 Let me tell you that I said certain things 
 to you, not with the least wish to please 
 you, but because they pleased me, because 
 they eased my heart, and because they were 
 true. Let me tell you it is a pleasure to 
 dwell for an hour in a fool's paradise. You
 
 ffIS LETTERS 75 
 
 are one of those wise prophets that know 
 how to provide for the fulfillment of their 
 own prophecies. In one thing, however, 
 unluckily for me, you are mistaken. I shall 
 never hate you. I am too deeply grateful 
 to you for that. You cannot, at your light 
 will, rob me of the feelings which are an 
 eternal wellspring of stimulus and joy. 
 
 I am glad you read my second letter, that 
 went by post, with some sympathy. I 
 thought it would get that if it reached you. 
 To-day, a week hence, it might be differ- 
 ent. 
 
 I shall go on writing to you until I get 
 what may be called the second degree of 
 congelation. Even then, I will try to thaw 
 out a last few words. Meanwhile I will rack 
 my brains for topics of an airy, entertaining, 
 and undisturbing nature. Let me catch the 
 careless, mocking, Jin de sikcle tone which 
 matches so perfectly the disillusions and the 
 shams of life. How tired you must be of 
 tragedy. It is quite out of date bad form. 
 Bon voyage, madame, bon voyage! I trust 
 the girlish ardor with which you shall wel- 
 come new sensations will be as fresh and
 
 7<5 HIS LETTERS 
 
 artless as the boyish folly that craved a 
 word from you. 
 
 Letter Twenty -fifth. 
 
 THURSDAY, MIDNIGHT. 
 
 It will perhaps remove what seems to ex- 
 ercise a slight strain upon your mind if I 
 tell you what is the truth, that I have just 
 burned every one of your letters that I had 
 left, talisman and all. There is, now, abso- 
 lutely nothing that you ever touched or saw, 
 except the books and a little piece of ribbon 
 which I return to you. This will enable 
 you to say with even more complete cer- 
 tainty than usual, " I do not know the 
 man." 
 
 Au plaisir de vous revoir dans 1'autre 
 monde, madame ! 
 
 Letter Twenty-sixth. 
 
 I don't expect you to answer this letter. 
 I have lost all hope of ever seeing your 
 handwriting again. If you consent even 
 to look at this it will be infinitely more 
 than I deserve. I do not ask you to forgive 
 me, for I know that I have offended this
 
 HIS LETTERS 77 
 
 time past forgiveness. I have tried all day 
 to frame a few words, but I could not, and 
 if now, at last, I put forth a feeble cry, it is 
 not to plead the faintest justification for my 
 wicked act, but only, only to mitigate a 
 little the nature of the feeling with which 
 you now regard me. For it is not quite 
 scorn with which you ought to look on me, 
 no, not quite that. It is rather the horror 
 with which we look on the insane. 
 
 It is only within the last few hours that I 
 have myself been able to understand what 
 happened. Up to eight o'clock last night I 
 had shut my eyes and refused to consider 
 settled the fact that you were really going 
 away. I had not grasped it ^t all. I had 
 all day been very much excited, passing 
 swiftly from one mood to another, thrilled 
 with rapture one hour, and melted to sobs 
 the next. But what your going away would 
 really signify to me had not been disclosed 
 to me at all. It was not until I sat alone in 
 my bedroom your last letter yes, the last 
 had just reached me, that a sense of the 
 appalling loneliness which would be mine 
 upon the morrow, and the next day, and for
 
 7 8 HIS LETTERS 
 
 weeks to come, flashed upon me. I per- 
 ceived suddenly that I had been literally 
 kept alive by your letters for a fortnight 
 past, and by the power I seemed to have of 
 calling you up to my mind, as long as you 
 were in the same atmosphere. 
 
 But that was because I knew in which 
 direction to think, and where you must be, 
 at least, at certain hours. But then, all at 
 once, I saw what would befall me : that a 
 few hours later I would never know where 
 you were, that I could not even tell in 
 which State you would be, that my imagi- 
 nation would never be able to find you, but 
 that it would grope and flounder like a lost 
 soul in the abyss. Ah, I never can make a 
 sane person understand what this convic- 
 tion meant to me. I have found, since I 
 began to know you, that I could live in the 
 brain, as other people live in the air; and 
 it had been so infinitely sweeter than any 
 life I had ever known that the thought of 
 losing it maddened me. I could not think 
 or reason at all. I could only keep saying 
 to myself, "She is gone, gone, and I can 
 never find her ! " And then the awful
 
 If IS LETTERS 79 
 
 ft 
 
 blankness of my existence as it had been 
 until lately, and as it now would be again, 
 fell on me with such a shudder as one in a 
 trance might feel who hears them nailing 
 the coffin over his head. Then I seized 
 your two last letters, as if they were wires 
 that led to you, and might bring rescue. 
 I tried to read them, but I could not as 
 a sane man would ; not as even I can 
 read them now, to-night when it is too 
 late. You told me to " be reasonable," 
 and alas ! at that moment I had no reason. 
 It seemed to me that at the moment of 
 departure, and when I most desperately 
 needed every thread of hope and faith, 
 it seemed to me that you had taken every- 
 thing from me, that you had chosen my 
 hour of need, not to accent but to attenu- 
 ate ; and then as I thought that, leaping 
 quickly from bad to worse, I said, "Oh, 
 Heavens! she is regretting. She wishes 
 to recall her words. She would rather I 
 did not have them. She is thinking of 
 herself all the time, and not at all of m^ 
 that am to be left here in this frightful soli- 
 tude." And then, as a man that has a knife
 
 8o HIS LETTERS 
 
 stuck in his heart turns it round in the frenzy 
 of his pain, I tore out of my breast-pocket 
 all the latest letters that I had been treasur- 
 ing from a sort of blind instinct that I should 
 need them, and I hurled them into the 
 flames all all, even the card which bore 
 the dates and places. 
 
 And I found, a minute afterward, when I 
 tried to pull some charred remnants out of 
 the fire, that I could only recall the ad- 
 dresses in N. and O. and that the rest had 
 gone from me. 
 
 For a while, as I sat, staring at the 
 embers, I seemed to have no distinct con- 
 sciousness of any .thought or feeling; and 
 the first thing that took shape in my mind 
 was a wicked desire that I might not suffer 
 like that all alone. " My God ! " I said, 
 "shall not she suffer too ? " As if hurting 
 you could make me any less wretched ! 
 Oh, I tell you that such wickedness as that 
 deserves more pity than detestation ; for 
 no sane man could feel it toward anyone 
 and how, in Heaven's name, to you, who 
 had been, that very day, an angel of kind- 
 ness and sympathy, who had wept because
 
 fffS LETTERS 8 1 
 
 I had wept? Why could I not think of 
 that, last night ? Because I was mad with 
 grief and the anticipation of what I was to 
 suffer, and self-pity for the destruction of 
 those letters, and a wild wish to pull down 
 the firmament in a general ruin. And then 
 I wrote those vile masterpieces of iniquity ! 
 the two notes that you got this morning. 
 I had .a maniac's ingenuity in coining 
 phrases that would wound. In my mind I 
 sullied you by odious doubts and suspicions 
 that you had no doubt been playing with 
 me, amused yourself studying a new and 
 morbid type, but that having exhausted it, 
 you would now, when you were a long way 
 off, and could not be teased by hourly en- 
 treaties, let me know that on the whole you 
 did not care to have so much of your time 
 taken up with correspondence, and that I 
 had better employ my talents in a more 
 useful way. Oh, yes ; all night I kept say- 
 ing to myself that that must be the epitome 
 of your thought, for otherwise you would 
 not go away. Ah, you must see that I was 
 mad. 
 
 I was so afraid that I should oversleep
 
 82 HIS LETTERS 
 
 the hour of departure ; and what, as the 
 night wore on, seemed of all things the 
 most intolerable was that you should go with- 
 out my telling you that I didn't care didn't 
 care and make you, if I could, believe me. 
 And so, in a fever of haste, I went out soon 
 after dawn, long before the shops were 
 open. I wandered about the streets, came 
 home again, wondered if there was any 
 other fiendish thing that I could do, remem- 
 bered my little ribbon, plucked that off, 
 determined to make you understand that I 
 wouldn't keep anything of yours ; went out 
 again and found a messenger, and then, 
 having completed my despicable work, 
 came home and threw myself all dressed 
 upon my bed. I was tired, exhausted, I 
 suppose. At any rate I was in a troubled 
 sleep when a servant woke me up to give 
 me those those six lines that you had 
 traced upon a card. The torture that I 
 have gone through since I got those words 
 of yours were not like the torments of the 
 night. They were not those of a fiend, but 
 of a wrecked and hope-forsaken human 
 being. I knew that there could be no for-
 
 HIS LETTERS 83 
 
 giveness for me now ; that even if you 
 wished you could not think as kindly as 
 perhaps you did. But I thought that to- 
 night, if I was able to write at all, I would 
 try to picture something of what I have 
 gone through, so that, instead of despising 
 me, you might be moved to feel a little 
 compassion. I do not ask you to say that 
 you can look upon me more in sorrow than 
 in anger. I do not ask you ever to speak 
 to me again. You have only by silence to 
 let me know, as gently as you can, that you 
 do not care to receive any more letters 
 from me ; indeed, I could not write again if 
 you would let me, for I have lost the next 
 addresses, they are destroyed. 
 
 In a letter which I wrote you Wednesday 
 afternoon I said, " Forget me not ! " The 
 only word that I dare say to you to-night is 
 forget. Forget, forget ! for then, perhaps, 
 months hence you have been to me so in- 
 finitely forbearing you might you might 
 forgive. Would it at least raise me from 
 the dust if I swear to you that sooner 
 than again give way to the infernal im- 
 pulse to make you share my suffering, I
 
 84 HIS LETTERS 
 
 would find a quick and easy way to rid you 
 of a curse ? Would it ? But no, answer 
 not ; never address me again. 
 
 Letter Twenty-seventh. 
 
 FRIDAY. 
 
 I went out last night, in the blizzard, at 
 midnight, to post that outcry of despair ; 
 and this morning oh, this morning ! I find 
 my wild prayer answered, answered before 
 you heard it. Oh, no ; you heard it in your 
 heart. Ah, that was Christlike ! Why, if 
 there were no religion, such women as you 
 would make men like to invent one. 
 Whence, whence sprang in your white 
 bosom that exhaustless fund of gentleness 
 and forgiveness ? Oh, worshiped one, my 
 savior, why did not you punish me, destroy 
 me ? I wanted, I yearned to be destroyed 
 by you, in a blast of justice. I wanted you 
 to trample on me, to set your small heel on 
 my worthless neck, and grind me into dust 
 in the fury of an offended goddess ; and 
 you do not, you will not. Ah, you came 
 straight from heaven ; the earth is no place 
 for you !
 
 HIS LETTERS 85 
 
 Do I know what is the meaning of that 
 pain at the heart ? Before I knew you I 
 longed for sudden death. I cared not how 
 soon it came. But you, ah, that is differ- 
 ent ! You are a blessing to the earth. No 
 one with a soul can look at you and not be 
 better for the sight. Oh, you should never 
 have a pang ! When I think that you may 
 be suffering now, and that I can do nothing, 
 I that would die for you O God ! let me 
 wait a little, I can write no more. 
 
 Later. See, dear, I am kneeling to you 
 at this instant; I am clasping your knees; 
 I am looking up at you and praying you 
 that the very moment you receive this letter 
 you will telegraph me that you are perfectly 
 well. Don't leave me in this agony of anx- 
 iety a second longer than you can help. 
 You will not, will you ? Oh, let me thank 
 heaven for these electric wires ! 
 
 Those vile letters that I wrote in my de- 
 spair and anger, there is nothing you could 
 say of them that I would not underscore 
 with a ferocious, scathing emphasis. They 
 were unmanly, despicable, dastardly, be- 
 cause they aimed to make you suffer, from
 
 86 HIS LETTERS 
 
 no reason, from no better reason think of 
 it ! than because I was miserable myself. 
 Why, that is the very distinctive mark of 
 fiends, who, because they are in hell, try 
 to vent their spite and envy on harmless 
 human beings ! 
 
 Something you let drop of youth. What 
 meaning has the word to one that thinks of 
 you ? I happen to know that you are more 
 than a dozen years younger than I, and I 
 would to God the interval were less. And 
 let me tell you, dearest, that if you were 
 much younger than you are, I could not love 
 you, not quite so much as I do now. You 
 would know less ; your range of vision 
 would be narrower, your feelings less in- 
 tense and sensitive. They could not an- 
 imate, inflame, electrify every fiber of your 
 lovely body as they do now. It is only a 
 full-grown woman, in the flower of her mind, 
 her soul, and her vitality, that can both feel 
 passion and inspire it. It is only for the 
 ignorant that Elaine has any charm. To 
 me give Guinevere. Ah ! if I might but sit 
 by your side, and recall the sad idyl to your 
 sweet listening ear.
 
 HIS LETTERS 87 
 
 Somewhere in this letter I have used 
 the word anger. Anger, anger with you ? 
 Now listen to me, my beloved, I invoke no 
 god; but here in the forum of my conscience, 
 which is god enough for me, I swear to you 
 that if I ever again say to you, deliberately 
 and intentionally, one word that hurts you, 
 you shall not need to smite me with your 
 forgiveness. I will punish myself. Believe 
 it, and say to me that you believe it. Say 
 it, dear, and prove it by writing to megayly 
 and teasingly ; just to see how meek and 
 lowly I will always, while life lasts, be to 
 you. 
 
 Let me just touch on one thing that you 
 said in one of your latest letters. You see, 
 divinest, that I remember every word, 
 though the paper that had left your hand 
 exists no longer. You said that when I saw 
 you I must expect nothing / for I should find 
 you de glace. As I read that I said, " Is it 
 possible that this gracious lady imagines 
 that when I see her I could pain her by 
 showing her a consciousness of her gra- 
 ciousness ? Does she think that by a look, 
 a tone, a syllable, an accent, I would betray
 
 88 HIS LETTERS 
 
 a recollection of some sweet word she 
 might have whispered to me in a distant 
 dream ? Does she not know that if a man 
 is worthy to kiss the hem of her gown, it is 
 when a woman has been kind that he is 
 humblest ; that it is to degrade me infinitely 
 to apprehend the contrary ? " Ah, no ! be- 
 lieve me, when the day comes that I shall 
 look upon your face, you shall find me suf- 
 ficiently conventional. And I am sure that 
 you and I have between us brains enough 
 to talk in a decorous, lively, and fruitful 
 way even about the weather. 
 
 Oh, what have you done with my little 
 silken string, the only thing I had left that 
 I thought you had touched, my precious 
 ribbonlet ? What have you done with it ? 
 Have you thrown it out of the window, or 
 flung it on the floor, to be trodden on and 
 swept away? If you have, it has served me 
 right, but if by chance you have kept it, tell 
 me, will you not ? and I will tell you what 
 to do with it, not now, but on some distant 
 day, when I am not so sorrowful, and when 
 I know that you are well. 
 
 Tell me one thing more. What did you
 
 HIS LETTERS 89 
 
 mean by bidding me be entirely loyal ? Do 
 I understand your thought ? I need no 
 such command. It is utterly impossible for 
 me to think of another woman ; all others 
 simply do not exist. It is not possible for 
 a man to be unfaithful when he truly loves. 
 He is like ice, dead to every other member 
 of her sex. This is true, and some day I 
 will tell you more of this . . . Now, dear- 
 est, a last word. Let "no fear of being 
 hurt by me ever again trouble your soul. 
 The remorse and agony that I have known 
 in these last two days have done the work 
 of a lifetime. So, do what you will to me, 
 never shall you hear a word or see a look of 
 reproach. Good-night, good-night, good-by! 
 
 Letter Twenty-eighth. 
 
 Ah, you did pity ; you could find it in 
 your heart to forgive. Your telegram I 
 see I see the heavenly compassion that 
 beamed from your eyes, as you whispered 
 those words of balm and joy ineffable, to a 
 self-stricken one who desired, who yearned 
 to die. " Everything is forgiven and under- 
 stood." Forgiven ? God bless her ! Yet,
 
 9 HIS LETTERS 
 
 alas ! so sweet a woman might out of sheer 
 gentleness forgive brutality she could not 
 comprehend. But "understood"- oh, did 
 your instinct tell you what that word would 
 mean to me ? You could not " understand " 
 unless you had begun to care for me just a 
 little. When you said "understood" it was 
 as if you had shyly, shyly touched my 
 parched lips with your soft j fingers. Ah, 
 yes ; you can see, looking back, what I too 
 am able to discern, that your going away 
 was the unmeant, infallible touchstone of 
 the depth and nature of the feeling that I 
 have for you. If I could unshaken, nay un- 
 ruffled, have seen you, at the last moment, 
 go away for weeks and thousands of miles, 
 if I could have seen that without a heart- 
 splitting explosion and very earthquake of 
 the soul I should have utterly miscon- 
 strued the fervor and the quality of what I 
 took to be affection. It would have proved 
 that I had taken the name of love in vain. 
 Surely you will never again ask me to search 
 my heart, and weigh and measure the truth 
 of my words to you. I gave, without mean- 
 ing, a terrible proof of my sincerity, for I
 
 HIS LETTERS 9 1 
 
 hurt you you, whom if another hurt he 
 need look for no mercy at my hands ; the 
 tortures of the lost would be too good for 
 him. 
 
 Later. I emerged from my cell last night, 
 and went down town to dine with a lot of 
 men, intending to come home by ten, for I 
 grudge every moment that I cannot give to 
 thoughts of you. But there was much wild 
 talk of literature, of art. What are these 
 things to life? And H. insisted on unfold- 
 ing to L., to D., and the others, some dream 
 he has of carrying the war into Philistia. 
 So I did not come home till midnight in a 
 bad humor vexed that so many hours were 
 gone which I could have employed much 
 better, and wondering, wondering what you 
 were doing at that moment. " You fool ! " 
 to myself I said, " do you fancy that she 
 thinks of you? Thank your stars that she 
 has not spurned you, that she did not tear 
 the heart out of your body, in the fury of 
 her wrath and scorn ! " And so, grateful 
 yet downcast, like a man reprieved from 
 punishment, but doubtful whether the sun 
 will ever again shine with the same warmth
 
 93 HIS LETTERS 
 
 I came up to my bedroom. There on 
 the table lay a telegram, "Good-night ! 
 The angels guard thee." It was from you 
 the whisper came. Did you not feel with 
 that marvelous sixth sense what happened 
 to me then ? Did you not see me cast my- 
 self upon my bed, clasping your message in 
 my hands, and thrusting it close to my 
 heart ? Did you not hear me speak to you ? 
 You must have heard, for in that vision it 
 seemed to me that I had force enough to 
 bound across the gulf that parted us. I 
 found your room I entered it you were 
 sleeping one of your hands lay like a lily 
 on the tender margins of your breast. The 
 other hung trailing over the white edge of 
 the couch. Ah, do you know why in your 
 slumber you drew that pendent hand away 
 with a pettish, fretful motion ? Because 
 you felt my kiss upon its finger-tips. I was 
 kneeling to kiss that which was so kind 
 to me. 
 
 Good-by, thou that hast the secret of 
 being at once in two places, no matter how 
 wide apart they be. 
 
 This word I post now, to make sure of its
 
 HIS LETTERS 93 
 
 arrival before you leave. To-morrow I 
 shall write again. Oh ! telegraph me that 
 you are quite well. Don't leave me in sus- 
 pense about that also. 
 
 Letter Twenty-ninth. 
 
 I received your telegram of nine o'clock 
 last evening. Bless you for sending it, 
 though it was with a poignant mixture of 
 feelings that I read it. Oh, you were ill all 
 the way, and you are ill still ; and you do 
 not revile and curse me for having offended ! 
 My God ! what shall I do ? You will not 
 let me do the only thing that might a little 
 revive my self-respect accept with humble- 
 ness the harshest, most galling thing that 
 you could say to me. Kiss, ah, yes, I crave 
 to kiss the foot that spurned me. You will 
 not let me do anything, then, but loathe 
 myself and worship you ? Oh, when you 
 do these things, you set yourself so infinitely 
 above all other human beings I dare not 
 look up. It would be sacrilege to love a 
 saint. I was all wrong, all wrong in the 
 tenor of my dreaming about you. I see 
 that in fashioning you nature hesitated
 
 94 HIS LETTERS 
 
 long ; that her hand faltered, doubting 
 whether she would make you a Venus or a 
 Madonna. I know that you could be the 
 one, and whether you could be the other I 
 know not now, and I will never dare to 
 guess. But, my adored one, since your 
 heart can frame no conception of vengeance, 
 except to bless them that smite you, let 
 there be no limit to your mercy. Do this 
 too for me, do this. Tell me that you will 
 burn, that you have burnt those two wicked 
 letters that I sent to you that Thursday 
 morning. If you keep them you will look 
 at them again, and I shall know it, I shall 
 know it by the sinking of my heart. For 
 God's sake, dearest, do this for me. Alas ! 
 there is nothing, nothing, nothing I can do 
 for you ; nothing to prove the agony of my 
 repentance. 
 
 Later. Do you remember in one of 
 your letters oh, I have forgotten none of 
 them ! though they are no longer here for 
 me to kiss do you remember bidding me 
 pause and weigh the " value, strength, and 
 truth " of the words I said to you ? Dear, 
 I have weighed them, and they have no
 
 HIS LETTERS 95 
 
 strength and no value. If I had the high 
 virtues of Plato, and the quivering fingers 
 of de Musset, I could not distinguish and 
 unravel the myriad fairy threads of emo- 
 tion, sympathy, and admiration that make 
 up the cable of my love for you. My 
 words hold nothing but the truth ; oh, they 
 are true ! How could they be aught else ? 
 They come not from the brain, but from the 
 heart. You know that heart ; you created 
 it. You took a blank page and stamped it 
 all over with your name. Why, I could not 
 lie to you. I tried to in those two vile 
 letters when I sought to prove that I did 
 not care, I did not care. But I could 
 deceive no one. The dullest eye in read- 
 ing them would say, " The man is wicked, 
 mad, but yet he loves her." You say 
 you, " love the sun, the light, the air, all 
 those lovely sky influences that make one 
 healthier and higher." Ah, you shall never 
 again have aught else from me. 
 
 I would that by my death I could make 
 thee immortal. You needed not to tell me 
 that never in your life have you had an 
 envious or malicious thought. How could
 
 96 nis LETTERS 
 
 you have ? Whom should you envy ? It 
 is they who must look up who envy ; not 
 she who, wherever her soft eyes turn, must 
 needs look down. And where envy is not, 
 how could malice find place ? It could not 
 breathe in such an air. 
 
 You say I do not know you. Alas, I 
 know you but too well ! It is the perfection 
 of my knowledge that racks me with those 
 dreadful pangs of self-abasement and con- 
 tempt. How could I dare to try to wound 
 you ? Oh, I am a worm that strove to 
 sting a god. 
 
 Letter Thirtieth. 
 
 SATURDAY. 
 
 There are many things, dearest, that one 
 realizes for the first time in his life when 
 one is utterly possessed (in the Scriptural 
 sense) by a great passion. One is the hor- 
 ribly congealing and desiccating effect pro- 
 duced by mere distance upon the written 
 word. Now, if I were discoursing upon 
 public affairs, if I were a diplomat sent 
 to lie abroad for the good of my country, 
 I should welcome the chill and aridity
 
 HIS LETTERS 97 
 
 which would choke and smother the last 
 spark of impulsive human feeling. But 
 fancy making warm love, hot love, at 
 the distance of a thousand leagues! It is 
 a contradiction in terms ; it is unthinkable. 
 Poor Love, he is but a child, you know, 
 and he takes cold and turns pale from too 
 long exposure to the air. But Amor rep- 
 resents only the earthly element in the fath- 
 omless complexity of feelings that make 
 a passion truly great. It is only he that 
 absence has the least power upon ; and as it 
 is he whose footsteps are tracked by the 
 ghastly specters of doubt, jealousy, and self- 
 ishness, perhaps the letter from which this 
 mischief-maker is barred out will be all the 
 more healthy and acceptable. 
 
 But, really, it is curious, the effect of great 
 distance on the pen. When she oh, what 
 a lovely word that is ! when she, the one 
 woman, is in the same town, when the very 
 air you are inhaling may carry a trace of 
 her sweet breath, when you know that in a 
 trice a messenger can put a missive in her 
 hand, why then you forget that writing is at 
 best an artificial and roundabout mode of
 
 98 HIS LETTERS 
 
 expression ; and for the moment you can 
 give it something of the gush, the fervor, 
 and the sincerity of speech. But speech 
 itself, ah, that is the noblest organ of the 
 soul. How its tones haunt you, and what 
 a thing it is to watch the birth of thought 
 struggling into life and utterance upon the 
 trembling lips! Heavens! What would 
 your voice sound like if you spoke to one 
 you really cared for ? I know, I feel that it 
 is music, though I have never heard it ! 
 think of it ! There I have written quite a 
 little essay on the psychology of absence, 
 and I don't believe you are a bit grateful. 
 
 Later. I thank you, thank you for telling 
 me how to reach you in M. Oh, if you had 
 seen the wild search which on Thursday, 
 after I got those six reproachful lines, I 
 made for the card with the addresses, and 
 the ang-uish with which I realized that it 
 
 o 
 
 must be among the letters of which I made 
 that hideous bonfire. Heavens ! suppose 
 I had forgotten the address. For nearly 
 two days, until I got last night the tele- 
 gram, I shook with fear lest I had forgotten 
 it had somehow got it wrong. Think of
 
 HIS LETTERS 99 
 
 it ; suppose that those three days had 
 stretched into three weeks, and in the whole 
 of that eternity I could not have spoken of 
 my contrition or prayed you, prayed you to 
 forgive. I must stop. I must go quickly 
 and post these poor fond words of mine, if 
 they are to go to-night and reach you, as I 
 would have them, with all the speed attain- 
 able by man. 
 
 Letter Thirty-first. 
 
 I have the first letter written from M., 
 that noble letter in which you not once 
 reproach me. Oh, you are my savior ! 
 How can you be so good to me? And you 
 knew what I wanted you to do with my bit 
 of ribbon. You did not keep me waiting ; 
 you did it 'at once, and sent it back to me. 
 I have kissed it a hundred times in the last 
 five minutes. It had lain on your bosom, 
 close to the heart that I had hurt in my 
 insanity, and which yet, which yet forgave. 
 Ah, the runaway slave that in a burst of 
 fury broke his fetters has come back of his 
 own will. He has bowed his neck to a 
 yoke more light, more sweet, more lovable
 
 100 ///5 LETTERS 
 
 than freedom. His collar is re-riveted, and 
 he can shake it off no more. 
 
 I will be more careful about my health, 
 since you care in the least about it; but 
 really, dear, I need no physician but you. 
 If I could see you once I should have the 
 health of Hercules. Before knowing you 
 I know what was the matter with me ; I 
 was literally dying of sheer emptiness of 
 heart. It was killing me to mark that the 
 starlit sky, a touching poem, the odors of 
 flowers, the tones of music no longer had the 
 power to throw me into a delicious trance. 
 It seemed to me that the best part of me 
 was already frozen, dead ; but oh, my love ! 
 it has come back to me, you have brought 
 it back. I can feel again the joy, the 
 beauty, and the rapture of living. I want 
 to live ; I could not die ! I am so much 
 better than I was a month ago. It is as if 
 some powerful elixir had been shot into my 
 veins. 
 
 But think what a dreadful thing it is to 
 me, whom you have given a new life as truly 
 as if you had raised me from the dead ; think 
 what it is to learn, as I must learn from
 
 tfIS LET7ERS lot 
 
 your letters, that you are less happy for 
 knowing me. I do not invigorate you, it 
 seems, as you do me. I do not lift you up 
 as you lift me, Oh, no; O God, I drag you 
 down ! What must I do, what shall I do ? 
 I can't help loving you, but I will obey you. 
 and seem calm. I must quickly master that 
 hard lesson before I see you, for then I 
 must be calm and even frosty, lest I hurt 
 the delicate and shrinking petals of that 
 rose, your heart. 
 
 I would say, The angels guard thee ! but 
 thou needest no celestial guardians. What 
 needest thou of them ? Tis they should 
 kneel to thee. 
 
 Letter Thirty-second. 
 
 I have your letter from M., and the post- 
 script the postscript which has made a god 
 of me. But let me wait, let me wait a mo- 
 ment, or I can speak of nothing else. 
 
 I telegraphed you yesterday to answer 
 my telegrams and not my letters, because 
 letters, sent from such a distance, are mis- 
 leading. Yes, they have led me terribly 
 astray. Listen, dear ; the letter which you
 
 102 HIS LETTERS 
 
 posted at M. did not reach me until five 
 or six days afterward. Then my answer 
 to it needed three days to reach you. By 
 that time, just because you are as bewitch- 
 ingly changeful as an April sky, you might 
 have entirely forgotten the thought, the 
 mood, the sideword of emotion to which I 
 gave responsive, but, alas ! belated throbs. 
 Oh, instinct told me, that evening before 
 you went away, that there would be some- 
 thing awful in the absence and the distance. 
 Our cases, dear, were not at all the same. 
 I have no anchor. You had, if you cared 
 for it, for I loved you. You had my heart, 
 and you knew it. Even when I raved 
 against you in my agony I touched you, in- 
 stead of angering, for your clear eyes read 
 the truth. No passionette can make men 
 rave. But I why I of your heart had no 
 certainty at all. Ah, yes ; I might surprise 
 your senses, pique them a little, make them 
 curious to know more thoroughly a new, 
 wild, morbid type. For I know well enough 
 that few men can express themselves with 
 more frightful vigor and infectious realism 
 than I can, when I am roused. Well, to
 
 HIS LETTERS 103 
 
 startle and command your senses would of 
 itself be a triumph for which men have 
 gladly died. But you see my aim was so 
 much deeper, more comprehensive, more 
 aspiring ! It was your heart I wanted ; for 
 I divined, my own heart taught me, that if 
 I but conquered that, all the other joys 
 would be added unto me. It was not 
 Lucifer, but Michael, the greatest of the 
 good archangels, who took me up into a 
 high mountain and showed me that. No 
 mortal, he told me, who attacks a goddess 
 by her senses only can long detain her on 
 the earth. She has wings, and she will 
 spread them ; and the last lot of her lover 
 will be more infernal than the first. Her 
 heart, her heart, make that but yours, and 
 she will be 'seized with Aurora's hunger to 
 make you as herself, because she wished to 
 love forever. 
 
 Ah, I knew, I knew ; but what is knowl- 
 edge when hope is weak and dim ? Then 
 came that little letter with its wonderful 
 commingling of sweet and bitter, which at 
 one instant drowned me in delirium and at 
 the next shook me with horrible fore-
 
 104 HIS LETTERS 
 
 boding. It was not solely or mainly your 
 frank avowal that you knew not whether 
 I had your heart ; for it is just thinkable 
 that a woman even a very wise one 
 might have given her heart and not know 
 it at once. No, it was not that, but some- 
 thing which you went on to say, that to 
 me was pregnant and portentous. You 
 said, " To-morrow you may do or say or 
 think something that will rob you of your 
 power over me, and me of an illusion." 
 No one who cared in the least could have 
 said that. No one who loved could. You 
 could not do or say or think anything that 
 would not straightway undergo transfigura- 
 tion in my heart ; if in another not quite 
 beautiful, your touch would beautify it, 
 glorify ! Ah, a man who feels as I do 
 understands why his great ancestor deemed 
 even the plucking of that apple well done 
 because Eve did it. Why, nothing she 
 could do but ever to his fond eyes seemed 
 wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best. But 
 with you, it seemed, it was not so. You 
 would see with cool and piercing clearness ; 
 you would weigh and measure the thing
 
 HIS LETTERS 105 
 
 done. You would not see the one who did 
 it, and every act of his, through the haze 
 that love alone can generate. You could 
 never guess, I fear, what anguish that sen- 
 tence cost me, as I thought what dread- 
 ful self-denial and long martyrdom the con- 
 quest of your heart imposed. No one but 
 you has ever made me weep ah, no ! I 
 have been one of those that ever with a 
 steadfast temper have been able to take the 
 sunshine and the storm. Yet even in the 
 middle of my sorrow hope is, thank God, 
 so hard to kill there came to me a flicker- 
 ing faint gleam of hopefulness, as if as if 
 an infant's finger had touched my breast. 
 For I remember with what infinite sweet- 
 ness and forbearance you have treated me 
 in certain crises. Caprice knows no such 
 magnanimity. Had it been a mere caprice 
 you felt, oh, surely, you would have smitten 
 me, consumed me with a lightning-stroke of 
 wrath and scorn. Ah, then ; if not caprice, 
 what was it ? What was it made you utter 
 those arresting, agitating, paralyzing words ? 
 Was it, could it be a lovely modesty that 
 sought thus to throw up a last barrier ; that
 
 106 HIS LETTERS 
 
 withdrew dismayed and fluttering, deep 
 into its inmost keep ? For a great lady 
 need not be ashamed of a caprice but to 
 admit that her heart has surrendered ah, 
 that is quite a different avowal. My queen, 
 my queen, why do you ravish me with that 
 avowal in the postscript of that letter which 
 I have just opened ? Oh, do not bless me 
 with one breath, only to reclaim the bless- 
 ing presently. Don't you see that if you 
 love me, if you can give to me your heart, 
 everything for me is wholly changed? No 
 more misgiving ; it will be dead, and fear 
 extinct. I could not, even for your sake, 
 bar myself from you. I could not breathe 
 apart from you. 
 
 But even as I write this I am still torn 
 with apprehension. Who knows what may 
 have happened since you traced those 
 lines? For here is Wednesday noon, and 
 I have had no second word. Oh, think of 
 my suspense !
 
 HIS LETTERS 107 
 
 Letter Thirty-third. 
 
 You ought to prove a good physician, for 
 you are wondrous learned in the lore of the 
 heart. One might suppose that, at first 
 sight, the worst way possible to calm a man 
 already sufficiently excited to give him 
 something that had been pressed against 
 your bosom. Yet it did calm me, and you 
 knew it would. You knew that a man in 
 my condition must have something to touch 
 that had touched you. Your instinct told 
 you by what strange cheatings the senses 
 may be soothed and lulled. Or, it may be 
 that you had noticed how, when an infant 
 clamors for the breast he cannot have, they 
 slip into his mouth a tiny bit of moistened 
 rubber, and behold, he tugs away at it in 
 dubious contentment, and whimpers off to 
 sleep. 
 
 I have only had one letter written from 
 N. Don't think I am complaining I 
 only mentioned it, so that you may know 
 whether I received everything I should. I 
 don't want you to write very often, lest
 
 Io8 7/75 LETTERS 
 
 writing to me should become a sort of ball 
 and chain. 
 
 Much later. I had just said that, and 
 was trying to convince myself that I 
 believed it, when someone brought me a 
 very little envelope that bore your hand- 
 writing. The eagerness with which I 
 snatched it gave the lie to my protesta- 
 tions ; but Heavens ! I marveled my hand 
 did not drop off. That little envelope was 
 charged with electricity enough to kill a 
 dozen men ; it shook every nerve-cell to an 
 agony of ecstasy, set every drop of blood in 
 my body to bounding, swelling, bursting, in 
 a mad desire to spill itself. 
 
 It was the act of an angel to dispel my 
 doubts forever. You knew that it could be 
 done in one way only, and you took it. I 
 believe, believe, and nothing can cloud my 
 belief again. My God ! it is then possible. 
 It is true that you care for me a little. Oh, 
 there must be a God ; I have regained my 
 faith in him. For it is not thinkable, not 
 thinkable a child of earth should know such 
 rapture. And, dearest, is there not some- 
 thing indescribably ennobling in the fact
 
 HIS LETTERS 109 
 
 that you and I have been drawn together in 
 this strangest of all ways ? 
 
 I pity, don't you, those dull, common 
 creatures who suppose the eyes to be the 
 only transparent windows -of the soul, the 
 soul's sure channels to the heart ? Oh, we 
 have found a passage shorter, straighter, 
 more unerring, more delicious ; that 
 through which Love himself leaped when 
 he fell on Psyche in the dark. What a 
 miracle it is that you can evoke devotion, 
 worship, passion, merely by existing ; and 
 what exquisite flattery to me it is that you 
 should let me, with no other instrument 
 than a pen, touch in return your proud, 
 sweet heart. Why, this is the finest and 
 most admirable thing in all the long history 
 of lovers. I take back those gifts I made 
 of you to those men, more happy in that 
 posthumous blessing than ever they were in 
 their lives. Not one of them shall have 
 thee ; they could not love as well as I. 
 Good-night ! That little letter lies like a 
 red-hot coal now close to my heart, my 
 darling.
 
 HO HIS LETTERS 
 
 Letter Thirty -fourth. 
 
 I did intend to write to you about 
 your mind to-night, because I was deter- 
 mined to invigorate ; but the postman has 
 been here, and I have changed my mind. 
 
 I follow still the changes of the moon. 
 She draws the tides in woman's mystic na- 
 ture, and you draw me. I shall begin with 
 the wrong end, the less lovely end of your 
 longer letter. As for the little note, the 
 only, only letter worthy of the name that 
 ever in my life set my eyes to swimming, 
 that I must keep to the last ; should I even 
 think of it now, I should have to throw 
 down this pen. 
 
 I wonder that you don't more often mis- 
 understand my letters, that there are not 
 more words left out or wrong ones slipped 
 in, for I have never read over a single sen- 
 tence, much less a paragraph, of what I 
 have written to you ; it would seem shock- 
 ing to me. When I am obscure, ah, you 
 must guess me, darling ! I cannot help 
 you. Guess, since you have the wisdom as 
 well as the beauty of a goddess.
 
 HIS LETTERS XII 
 
 As for what you say about recognizing a 
 perfume, it isn't worthy of you. You will- 
 fully misunderstand me. I had to speak of 
 those other letters in order to explain the 
 impression which yours made. You ordered 
 me to do so. It is not generous to impute 
 to me a cheap and vulgar affectation. But, 
 alas ! although a goddess, you are a woman, 
 and I thank God you are. 
 
 How could those people so misjudge you ? 
 Would that I might build an altar fit for 
 your white feet to rest upon. In all that I 
 said to them there was not one word, not 
 one phrase which I did not think to be the 
 truth ah, so much less than the truth but 
 less I had to say for your sake, my love, my 
 love. If there is a cabal against you, it is 
 that dog A. who has instigated it; I think 
 I may well guess why. What joy I take in 
 insulting him ! But your name I cannot 
 hear without a flush. I had a proof only 
 this morning that my power of self-control 
 is strangely weak where you are concerned. 
 As a rule I take off my collar, fearing to 
 ruffle and rumple it as I lie tossing in my 
 bed ; but last night I kept it on. I had
 
 112 HIS LETTERS 
 
 had distress enough that day, and I thought 
 it would soothe me. This morning, when 
 my man came to give me my bath, "You 
 have a string, sir, round your neck," he 
 said. I felt, I know, that I got crimson, and 
 I untied it in a hurry. Now, if I have no 
 more self-command than this before a ser- 
 vant, it behooves me to so act that nothing 
 shall cloud the clearness and straightfor- 
 wardness of my look. 
 
 Good-by, good-by ! I thank you for the 
 way you addressed this last letter. 
 
 Letter Thirty-fifth. 
 
 You say, in speaking of the " Kreutzer 
 Sonata," " I have read that terrible book. 
 I do not shrink from acknowledging it. I 
 have read it, and you are all wrong, all 
 wrong. Why should an agonized confes- 
 sion, wrung from the repentant murderer 
 Posdnicheff saved from death only by a 
 quibble of the law be the expression of the 
 personal experience of that great moralist 
 and poet, Tolstoi ? I am amazed at you. 
 Why so misjudge him ? Could the author 
 of ' Anna Karenina ' not have known love,
 
 HIS LETTERS "3 
 
 yea and all things ? Why should an appeal 
 for purity of morals in men .before, nay, 
 during marriage, so scandalize the world ? 
 What hypocrisy ! Tolstoi is a happy hus- 
 band and a loving father. He has not 
 chilled or killed his wife. This book paints 
 coarse animal propensities, unrelieved by 
 one spark of intellect, one gleam of high 
 aspiration, in a life spent idly without regu- 
 lar engrossing and healthful occupation 
 where could they lead unless to despair and 
 to crime ? A frightful portraiture, but true 
 true. And if more probable in the Slav 
 than in the Saxon temper, it is possible even 
 here. Its warnings should be heeded." 
 
 I beg your pardon, I daresay you are 
 right . . . but do such books reach their 
 purposes ? Do they not rather produce de- 
 pression and hopelessness in minds striving 
 to uplift themselves ? I know not. I can 
 only say that it depressed me. Grave ques- 
 tions these we will discuss anon. You say 
 that, " There is one mistake the great Rus- 
 sian makes when he says that a pure young 
 girl wants children children, not a lover. 
 This is not true ; a girl does not want chil-
 
 H4 HIS LETTERS 
 
 dren, nor does she dislike the thought of 
 them. That is all vague to her a matter 
 of indifference. What she does want is the 
 lover, not the husband, the lover that 
 ' homage of the dim boudoir,' which so often 
 marriage forfeits." 
 
 Yes, you are right and also in what you 
 say that " man, through his sensuality, 
 makes woman his enemy, not his 
 ally." 
 
 . . . Not even to spare you annoyance, or 
 shield myself from your displeasure, could 
 I ever tell you an untruth. Then I should 
 feel even more utterly unworthy of a kind 
 thought from you than I do now. I am 
 not a good man, Heaven knows, but I can, 
 at least, admire the paradise that a seraphic 
 wisdom had made of Peru before the Span- 
 iard spoiled it. You know, I dare say you 
 know everything that the Incas framed a 
 penal code of unparalleled simplicity. They 
 began by decreeing the fundamental law, 
 " He that uttereth the thing that is not, 
 shall surely be put to death." After this 
 law had been mercilessly enforced for gen- 
 erations, they discovered that they needed
 
 HIS LETTERS 11$ 
 
 rro other penal statutes. The lie extinct, all 
 crime was dead. 
 
 It was a tender heart that prompted you 
 to ask me certain questions. Ah, you know 
 how to chasten and purify the man that 
 loves you. 
 
 My mother ! How strange it is ! I sel- 
 dom, very seldom, speak of her. I have 
 not, until lately, thought of her so often as 
 I ought. But it is sweet to speak of her to 
 you. It is she that whispers to you when I 
 am at my best, and throb responsive only to 
 the noblest and best element of the com- 
 plex, all-embracing feeling that you have 
 kindled in my breast. 
 
 At other times I think it is my father 
 and the far worse man that life has made of 
 me whom you hear when you tell me that 
 it is poison I distill. 
 
 Ah, that was an ideal marriage ! No 
 wonder that I have been chasing love's 
 counterfeits ; for, indeed, I was love's child. 
 I believe that two human beings never gave 
 themselves to one another with such utter 
 self-surrender ; and I was the first-born. 
 He died young. She lingered for two
 
 Il6 HIS LETTERS 
 
 years, and then died at twenty-three. She 
 had the face of a Madonna, and I know she 
 had the soul of one ; for long afterward, 
 when I was able to weep over them, I read 
 some letters which she had kept during her 
 short married life, and which, so long as 
 she was living, no eye but hers had seen. 
 Through the two years after she had lost 
 him she was always praying, praying he 
 was not religious, he was more like me, but 
 he loved her that at last, in the hour of 
 dissolution, her faith might become his. 
 The poor soul shuddered at the thought 
 that in the heaven she was bound to, she 
 might seek him piteously, wildly, and not find. 
 
 For me, too, she was always praying, for 
 me ! But there is no God, no God that 
 answereth a prayer. Yet I have thought 
 that sometimes of late she has looked upon 
 me with a smile, a smile sad and wistful as 
 a tear ; but yet a smile, as she saw me once 
 more yearning for things noble and things 
 beautiful. 
 
 Her ... I saw but once. So young I 
 was that I can only remember seeing her 
 that once ; that morning when my nurse
 
 HIS LETTERS II? 
 
 took me up to the darkened chamber, and 
 drew down the white cloth shrouding the 
 eyes now closed forever. And I screamed, 
 and knew not why. Oh ! my tears are fall- 
 ing on this paper. Take those, dear, take 
 those ! . . . 
 
 . . . Was I once heard to say that Myra 
 was nicer than Gwendolen ? It must have 
 been in a hopeless, disappointed mood, 
 when it seemed to me that rather with 
 those pale, soft-eyed seraphs than with the 
 women that enslave would men find heaven's 
 peace. Ah, had I painted what you have 
 painted, over and over again would I say to 
 myself, " Is it possible that I have done 
 this ? " 
 
 Ah ! could I but have known you ten 
 years ago, I might by this time have done 
 something of which I should not feel 
 ashamed. But it is not too late. I am ten 
 years younger than Caesar was at Pharsalia, 
 and not a day older than he was when he 
 wept that as yet he had accomplished 
 nothing. Just think ! he had done nothing 
 but flirt with women and get into debt be- 
 fore he was fifty.
 
 Farewell ! beloved, forget me not, and 
 remember that I only live in you. 
 
 Letter Thirty-sixth. 
 
 Let me set that proud and tender heart 
 at rest forever on two points. Would that 
 I could as easily clear my mind of a mis- 
 giving which a little word you dropped 
 once has caused to haunt me. Happily, 
 I can set your heart at rest, beloved, without 
 altering or veiling the truth by so much 
 as a shade ; and I am so glad of that, for I 
 want to keep your respect. 
 
 I have never in my life had any letters 
 until I began to receive some in a certain 
 handwriting that I cared to read more 
 than twice, and not one for years that I have 
 read but once. But these others, oh, these 
 others ! There is not one of them that I 
 have not read over a dozen times, and some 
 a hundred times. What else could I do? 
 There is no woman breathing, I think none 
 ever breathed, who could write such letters. 
 Heavens ! How much culture, wisdom, 
 genius, poetry, romance is there commingled, 
 by an unheard-of alchemy, with how much
 
 HIS LETTERS 119 
 
 fire, vitality, and passion ! Oh, some of 
 those letters would call a man back from 
 the grave. "His heart would hear them 
 and beat, were it earth in an earthy bed." 
 I thank God that through them I have 
 known an angel's visits, though they have 
 been short, too short, and woe is me ! per- 
 haps not meant to last. For you said once 
 I can forget nothing that about your 
 own constancy you had grave doubts. Of 
 course you have, of course you have ; but 
 what a dreadful thought for me ! But I 
 must not dwell on that. Let me be happy 
 for a little time. The night will come. 
 
 And now listen, and believe while I an- 
 swer the other question. It is true, as I 
 once told you, that I never write letters. 
 In twenty years I have not written so 
 many letters as I have in the last few 
 weeks. Even when I ought, in common 
 gentleness and decency, I write but very 
 little. But it was not so much of the quan- 
 tity as of the kind of letters you were think- 
 ing. On that score, too, you have no cause 
 for doubt. When I said that sometimes I 
 could express myself with vigor and infectious
 
 120 HIS LETTERS 
 
 realism, I was not thinking of letters at all. 
 I had in mind certain attacks I had made 
 on men. Ah, I can cut to the bone. But 
 I never before wanted to use power to win 
 and not to wound. Never in my life had I 
 written one letter which I should care if all 
 the world should see. I know not what 
 prophetic instinct made me so reserved and 
 frigid in my style. It is the same instinct 
 that has always made me shrink from men- 
 tioning so much as a lady's name in talk 
 with other men. And even of those that 
 were not ladies I have never allowed myself 
 to speak, except with reticence and a sem- 
 blance of respect. Ah, the men who really 
 know me could tell you a strange thing 
 about me. I am not a bit better than 
 others ; perhaps not half so good you think 
 not and yet they would tell you that never 
 was a coarse word heard to pass my lips ; 
 and that no man ever ventured more than 
 once to tell such stories as men sometimes 
 tell, in my presence. But it is true, oh, it 
 is true that when a man is utterly in love 
 there is no such thing as impurity ; every- 
 thing is beautiful, etherealized, glorified.
 
 7/75 LETTERS 12 1 
 
 There is, no mad dream of passion which 
 does not seem worthy of a god. It is 
 strange, is it not, that I should have kept 
 always that outward purity and modesty ? 
 You will understand the mournful contra- 
 dictions of my life if you remember the 
 scene I once revealed to you, when a poor 
 little child of five, a little golden-haired boy, 
 realized in one awful moment that he was 
 cast helpless upon a brutal world. I was 
 pitched into a boarding-school no worse 
 than others all are bad. Oh, don't, don't 
 tell me I have lost something I never 
 can regain ! Ah, many and many a sad 
 night of late I have sobbed and sobbed and 
 sobbed in anguish to think I was not better. 
 Ah, take me, take me as I am ! There are 
 still left in me some stirrings, yearnings, 
 echoes of what I might have been, and 
 what, alas ! you wish I was. 
 
 Letter Thirty-seventh. 
 
 I do not believe to-night that I ever shall 
 see you. How delighted you will be to kill 
 my hope ! Well, I have your picture to com- 
 fort me. You cannot rob me of that. It
 
 122 HIS LETTERS 
 
 has been a great comfort to me during the 
 last few days. I am not so much afraid 
 of the mouth and chin as I was at first. 
 Nevertheless, I am in a sufficiently timorous 
 and abject condition. 
 
 Apropos of abjectness, I saw a photo- 
 graph of the Czarina lately. The thought 
 ran through my head, " This mistress of 
 all the Russias looks as if she too might 
 have a slender foot, but she could never set 
 it on my neck. That is pre-empted." 
 
 Has not a letter miscarried ? You speak 
 of having inclosed in one something about 
 your little dog. I have never received 
 that. If you are quite certain that you 
 sent it, will you not tell me when and how, 
 whether by post or servant ; then I will 
 investigate. 
 
 Later, i A. M. Ah, it is literally true 
 that at this instant I arise from dreams of 
 thee. 
 
 I have wondered why I did not always 
 dream of one, while sleeping, from whom, 
 in my waking hours, I never can escape. 
 Perhaps It was a blind, sullen effort of 
 nature to relieve the heart and brain ; but
 
 HIS LETTERS 123 
 
 if so, my will at last has subdued the inci- 
 dent of reaction, and I trust that henceforth 
 you will never be absent. 
 
 I have read your letter of yesterday a 
 hundred times. There is a part of it which 
 grieves me the more the oftener I read it, 
 but I will not reproach you ; I could not 
 frame the words. I only say to myself 
 sadly, " Of how slow a growth is trustful- 
 ness ! " You see, dear, you began with a 
 strong warp and decided bias against me, 
 and since I will not lie to you I would as 
 soon think of lying to God it is a hard and 
 Sisyphean labor to conquer preconception 
 and rehabilitate myself a little in your eyes. 
 Alas, I may not even peep over a fence 
 which others may jump over. That is a 
 part of my punishment. 
 
 What do I expect of a woman ? I don't 
 expect anything of "a" woman ; for experi- 
 ence has taught me that I should be dis- 
 appointed. But all that I could wish of 
 one woman is that she should simply be 
 herself, and that is you. 
 
 You speak of Myra, you speak of De- 
 ronda ; he never interested me, I cannot
 
 124 MSS LETTERS 
 
 even understand him. He is a woman's 
 man. I say it not invidiously, but scarcely 
 any of George Eliot's men are vital. But 
 about Myra ; she is the Madonna type. 
 Of course she of Bethlehem was just such a 
 Jewess. No man fit to live at all could fail 
 to worship her ; but how could there possi- 
 bly be any hunger in the worship ? Not 
 only would one be upon one's knees, but 
 the head would be dropped, not lifted. 
 One would be content to know her with the 
 ear, and not the eye. One would never 
 feel a wild impulse to look up and let one's 
 gaze wander longer, fastened on her face or 
 on her figure. 
 
 Gwendolen ? a hundredfold more human 
 and therefore more lovable. That sweet 
 passion was invented to glorify poor human 
 clay. I despise Deronda for not loving 
 her. What was he made of ? Marble ? 
 Snow ? Great Heavens ! couldn't the man's 
 soul find scope and spur enough for vibra- 
 tion and expansion in her contrition, aspira- 
 tion, agony, despair? And was she not 
 fair to see, and is that nothing, nothing to 
 a man ?
 
 HIS LETTERS 125 
 
 But, ah ! that searching, piercing ques- 
 tion that you put to me in that same letter ! 
 " Was it with my heart or my intellect that 
 I revered nobility and exaltedness ? " Oh, 
 it is miraculous that a woman should be 
 able to sink a shaft like that down to the 
 roots of a man's nature. Ah, how some 
 people must dread your eyes ! I fear them 
 not. Let them plunge in me as deep as 
 ever plummet sounded, and they can dis- 
 cover nothing but love, dear love for you. 
 That question it made me probe and ran- 
 sack myself as nothing in my life had done/ 
 Could I have had such shaking, stimulating 
 questions put to me ten years ago, I would 
 by this time have achieved something de- 
 serving your respect. Even though I have 
 pondered it long and anxiously, I have not 
 yet managed to answer it ; but I will find 
 the answer, and you shall have it, no 
 matter how it may damage me in your 
 esteem. There is nothing could damage 
 me irreparably in my own eyes but to de- 
 ceive you. 
 
 Now I am going to lie down again and 
 take your last letter, oh, my beloved,
 
 126 HIS LETTERS 
 
 sweetest, dearest darling, with me. Good- 
 night ! 
 
 Later. Oh, there was another passage 
 in that letter which ravished me, plunged 
 me in a frenzy. Tell me, tell me, did you 
 also intend that ? You must mean what 
 you accomplish. Your touch is too sure, 
 too infallible, too resistless not to be 
 meant. My God, how can one of thy 
 creatures have such stupendous power over 
 another? Why, with a word, an image, a 
 vision evoked on paper, you can do more 
 "with men than Argive Helen could with 
 her embraces. 
 
 I didn't mean to rave again like this. I 
 will be invigorating. I shall write you to- 
 morrow only about your talent. 
 
 Letter Thirty-eighth. 
 
 Of course I shall come. I could not dis- 
 obey you, but I would if I could ; for think 
 what you have said, " We must not meet 
 often." How, then, am I to live? How 
 can people say such things ? I could not. 
 Ah, can you not see, for a man with such a 
 heart as mine, to see you once and scarcely
 
 ffZS LETTERS 12 7 
 
 any more would be death ? I some- 
 times wonder how God measures us mor- 
 tals, and whether, looking down, he does 
 not think me too good for any woman. 
 Believe me, his rules of judgment must be 
 different from ours. I shall seem cold be- 
 cause I am a little afraid of you. Yes, you 
 divined it ; but that is just the reason why 
 I must go. A man must do the things he 
 is afraid of. Oh, you hurt me when you 
 tell me that I am so poor a masker that 
 even fools would see what I feel. I 
 thought myself so skillful. I am ashamed, 
 ashamed. I fear to harm you. Oh, I don't 
 want to go and see you I don't I don't 
 but I must.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IT was some fatality that took me to her 
 house on that very afternoon, and I know 
 it was an accident by which I was admitted. 
 Someone evidently was expected ; but I 
 felt, as men of some experience feel, instinc- 
 tively men who know something of femi- 
 nine intricacies that it was not I. As I 
 ascended the stairs I heard the butler whis- 
 per a word of reproof to the footman in the 
 hall, and the little dog, who sat on one leg 
 warming his nose by the fire, snapped and 
 growled in sympathetic reprobation. 
 
 I noticed, too, that the hand which I 
 raised to my lips on entering was a trifle 
 cold. Her graceful back was reflected in 
 the looking-glass, with the coil of her dusky 
 hair. She moved forward a step or two to 
 greet me in her suave accents. 
 
 There was always something peculiar 
 about her voice, something which suggested 
 
 128
 
 H/S LETTERS 129 
 
 nature nature as one feels her influences 
 in the drowsy hum of insects on summer 
 nights, in the twitter of birds in the leaves, 
 in the beating assonance of waves on the 
 shore, the flutter in the glad meadows, the 
 gayety of sunlit fields. There were grave 
 notes and measured ones, and then sudden 
 vibrations, as of the gurgling kamichi in the 
 forest branches, at the time of its love mak- 
 ing. " A sweet, low voice," people said, 
 speaking of her. Insufficient adjectives ! 
 
 She seated herself on the sofa, and I 
 found a chair near to her. We fell to talk- 
 ing of common things of the world, its 
 obligations, its exactions. I told her I was 
 deputed to organize a party on winter 
 pleasures bent, which I hoped that she 
 would honor us by joining. We were to 
 pass a few days for the carnival at Mon- 
 treal ; thence wing a rapid flight through 
 Canada's frozen plains to the coast. 
 
 " Ah, yes ; Mrs. Heathcote invited me, but 
 I don't know what is the matter, I have an 
 ungregarious fit on, Mr. Milburn." 
 
 " Is it the detaining brush ? " 
 
 " Not a bit. I am doing nothing at my
 
 13 HIS LETTERS 
 
 work now, nothing. No ; who knows ? 
 Perhaps I am indolent, or perhaps I am 
 falling in love?" She posed this as a ques- 
 tion, with an ascending inflection, arrested 
 on her lip. 
 
 " I don't believe a word of it. Mrs. 
 Heathcote herself is not more impreg- 
 nable." 
 
 " Ah, dear Antoinette, she is not the 
 creature the world thinks her ! And you 
 have the Greshams, too, riest-ce pas ? Who 
 is the fair Constance destroying now? I 
 hear, however, she is reforming. And 
 Norah Eustis Horace is in the West I 
 think will she be one of you ? Take care, 
 Mr. Milburn ; if Constance is veiling her 
 lovely eyes I believe Norah's are opening 
 of late." 
 
 " So Mrs. Maury was telling me." 
 
 "Ah, Nelly, your cousin. There's chic 
 for you ! I adore Nelly. She has been 
 beating at my door for a fortnight, and I 
 have denied myself. I am afraid of Nelly. 
 There is no resisting the creature. If I 
 had opened to her, I would have been half- 
 way to Canada already."
 
 HIS LETTERS 131 
 
 "Well, why not?" 
 
 "Why not? Why not? Why, I ask 
 you, and for all answer you say I am im- 
 pregnable." 
 
 " Ah, yes, and impenetrable, as you women 
 must be whom the world treats well. Why 
 should you be aught else, pray, but amiable 
 and calm ? Nelly is another, not much like 
 you, though. Nelly's ideas of art would be 
 the Trianon and -marble fountains and the 
 matter of a Watteau frock or two ; while 
 one feels that your watchwords, Mrs. Mon- 
 crief, would be nature and passion." 
 
 " Ah ! I like that ! Thank you. Yes, I 
 can well fancy that Mrs. Maury's and my 
 artistic convictions would differ. But so 
 few of us can follow out our own ideas. 
 Balked individuality leads to revolt. I am 
 a revoltie" She sighed. 
 
 "You are a success." 
 
 " Yet the prudes will have none of me. 
 They were shocked at my last study of the 
 dancing nymph. Do you remember it? 
 
 " That poem yes. Prudes ! Do you 
 fancy that their tirades lie in the province 
 of ethics, as they claim ? Depend upon it,
 
 I3 2 &fS LETTERS 
 
 hysteria is their disease. They foam at 
 the mouth because some women are lov- 
 able and men tell them so. It is a pill that 
 should be administered to them, not a lec- 
 ture/ Why, they don't know the depth of 
 their wound until a careless finger has 
 probed it. Depend upon it, the prudes are 
 recruited from the ranks of the unloved." 
 
 She laughed. " I believe you must be 
 right ; I have sometimes thought so. So 
 you recommend me to go on my own 
 way?" 
 
 " Why, of course, since this means not 
 only peace and health and progress, but as- 
 cent." Through all this persiflage I had 
 remarked a note of febrile agitation, and 
 the frequent movement of 'a pretty head 
 toward a curtained doorway. The por- 
 tiere stirred ; the butler's burly visage ap- 
 peared between its folds. "Mr. Thornton," 
 he announced. 
 
 She turned to me, " We have not 
 met before, you know," she said. " You 
 must present your friend." And I believed 
 her although it puzzled me, for I fancied 
 that her bosom rose and fell too quickly
 
 ffIS LETTERS 133 
 
 where the roses were, and that these paled 
 a little near her heart. 
 
 I can see her now, standing to receive 
 him, by the side of a great pot of tall lilies. 
 The flowers almost shielded her from the 
 glance of the newcomer. Never had I seen 
 her so womanly before. For there were 
 those who accused her brilliancy of cold- 
 ness. Upon me Mrs. Moncrief had never 
 made an impression of coldness, only of 
 being a little weary weary of the emotions 
 she inspired, of that hot breath, as of the 
 desert, which had always surrounded her 
 steps, stirring in her more lassitude than an- 
 swering emotion. If evil had brushed that 
 pure forehead, it had left little trace. And 
 the depths her eyes revealed whose study 
 might become perilous told no story of 
 her own past. Yet a man would fain have 
 read their mysteries, even if it brought to 
 him but hopelessness. ' 
 
 Thornton came in quickly, with the move- 
 ment of one who should fall at a woman's 
 feet, .but, seeing me, he paused an instant, 
 as if discomfited or embarrassed. She ad- 
 vanced and they touched each other's fin-
 
 134 HIS LETTERS 
 
 gers no more. I looked from her to him. 
 He had entered with a smile upon his face, 
 but now I saw it change, and in its stead 
 there swept an expression of distress and 
 of anxiety. He seemed to seek in her 
 some assurance which he found not, the 
 crowning of some hope long nursed, cruelly 
 denied. 
 
 " Would Galatea remain upon her pedes- 
 tal forever, while he gazed up at her?" I 
 asked myself this question, lingering. I 
 knew I ought to go, I saw it ; yet, in my 
 r61e of student of humanity, am I to blame 
 if I stopped a minute,. while these two be- 
 ings of such high instincts, such rare intelli- 
 gence, looked at and gauged each other. 
 " How captivating it would be ! " I thought, 
 " should he become the master of what is 
 highest in this woman? what proud conquest 
 would he make of this strange soul of hers ! 
 Would he not win her by surprising her ? 
 and should he possess that wayward spirit, 
 would he not leave his mark upon it ? make 
 it his forever ? " 
 
 And then I took pity upon him upon 
 them both. I looked up my hat and cane
 
 HIS LETTERS 135 
 
 and said " Good-night." They did not bid 
 me stay. I left them thus, together and 
 alone. 
 
 Letter Thirty-Ninth. 
 
 WEDNESDAY NIGHT. 
 
 I don't know what to think ; I am torn 
 asunder. Sometimes I am ravished with 
 delight when I look at that little handker- 
 chief, when I seize it, kiss it, crush it 
 against my face, inhale its scent, which is so 
 strangely new and deadly sweet to me. 
 And is it true that I have touched that 
 flowerlike thing, your hand, my goddess 
 and my queen ? seen you at last ! in all 
 your splendor and your beauty ! But the 
 earth-born are insensate. I fell to thinking 
 of what you would not give, of what you 
 would not do ; and then I dropped at once 
 from the fifth no, the seventh heaven 
 down to the depths of misery. For I saw, 
 oh yes, I saw too plainly that it was but my 
 mind you liked ; that you when you had 
 taken a searching look at me and your 
 looks were searching although swift that
 
 136 HIS LETTERS 
 
 you were disappointed. And you said, " I 
 would rather he should write to me than see 
 him." Ah, yes ; you did say that to your 
 kind heart. Ah, you may like my intellect 
 a little, but you find that you can't like me. 
 Yes, that is what you mean. Alas, how can 
 you ? I do not blame you in the least. 
 And so I was too nice to tell you what 
 I remembered, that a lovely lady had said 
 to me, that she would, when she saw 
 me, touch my forehead with her hand. 
 You would have been near me then, I 
 would have drunk your breath. . . It 
 was a dream, but give me such dreams 
 above all realities, such realities as I yet 
 have known. But I love you a hundred 
 times more than I did yesterday, since I 
 have seen you. Oh, what a dreadful fate 
 that is, to love you more ! When I left 
 you I could not come home. There was 
 something too commonplace about the 
 associations of my house. I told the man 
 who was driving me to take me up the 
 river. I sat for hours gazing out upon the 
 water, thinking of you, trying to puzzle out 
 the secret of your sweet ways ; but I can't,
 
 HIS LETTERS 137 
 
 you are too enchantingly deep for me. 
 The Sphinx will slay me, I foresee it. 
 
 When am I to see you again ? May I 
 come ? Say that I may ; but when, when, 
 when, when ? And then, for God's sake be 
 alone. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 H. T. 
 
 Letter Fortieth. 
 
 SUNDAY, MIDNIGHT. 
 
 I went to bed at eight o'clock this 
 evening ; think of it ! And I have just 
 wakened from a deep, refreshing sleep. 
 Ah, you are indeed a wonderful physician. 
 When I recall the horrible restlessness and 
 wakefulness of the last week, when every 
 nerve would quiver with anxiety and suffer- 
 ing, such happy slumber seems incredible. 
 How wondrous, how awful, when one thinks 
 of it, is the part the spirit plays in the life 
 of man. Between us it has been all. It 
 has needed but one soft touch on your part 
 no, the word is not sufficiently aerial 
 but a breath, a thought, a gentle impulse 
 to work a revolution in the whole being of
 
 138 HIS LETTERS 
 
 another. Oh, how could you wrong your- 
 self by saying once that you were not 
 "very gentle"? Why, you are an angel of 
 compassion. 
 
 That I could not sleep much Saturday 
 night, though I had that precious letter 
 under my pillow, seems a strange contra- 
 diction. I was in a blissful swoon all that 
 afternoon. You had stooped suddenly 
 from heaven, and whispered something that 
 was like oh, it was like a kiss. But Satur- 
 day night, what with reading over passages 
 in some of your letters, over and over and 
 over again to reassure myself that my 
 eyes had not mocked me, and that the 
 words were really there and what with 
 writing to you, and, all at once, thinking of 
 your beauty something wrought me up to 
 a terrible excitement, and I lay awake for 
 hours in the dark, shivering and staring. 
 But to-day and to-night I have felt a 
 strange and delicious peace. Yes, love 
 indeed has his languors as well as his rap- 
 tures, and I know not which is the more 
 blissful. Oh, dearest, dearest, dearest, in 
 how many ways I love you ! There are
 
 HIS LETTERS 139 
 
 times when I worship you as if you were a 
 saint, and to me you are a saint. There 
 are others when I seem able to feel noth- 
 ing but a wild hunger to see your face, to 
 hear your voice, to touch your hand. I 
 know not which mood be sweeter. They 
 are both divine. 
 
 What was the impression made on me 
 by your first letter, the very first that came 
 to me last summer ? You see I do not 
 need to keep your letters to remember 
 every question. It was not because I 
 feared to forget a word of them that I 
 grieved so over their ashes, last Friday 
 night. It was because I used to like to 
 gaze at your handwriting, and wonder how 
 you looked when you wrote this or that ; 
 whether a faint smile wreathed your lips, or 
 your brows were curved in a soft frown. 
 And then it sometimes seemed, when I 
 pressed the pages in my hands, that you 
 could somehow feel the pressure. But that 
 letter ! Ah, there are strange presenti- 
 ments. I remember well the day I found 
 it perched upon a pile of books. There 
 was a tinge in it that coaxed the eye ; the
 
 140 HIS LETTERS 
 
 lightest suggestion of a scent that I liked 
 but did not recognize. I scanned the 
 superscription ; you know I had not seen 
 your handwriting then. I had not dreamed 
 that you would answer my little note. 
 This, I thought, is the letter of a woman of 
 refinement. I tore it open and glanced 
 swiftly at the signature. " Ah," I said, " it 
 is she ! " How I had thought about you ! 
 wondered ! how I thought and wondered 
 now ! " Let me see," I said, "how much I 
 can divine from this note ; how much her 
 paint-brush has not taught me. With all 
 their art they are not quite so inscrutable 
 as men can be." 
 
 Your face I had pictured to myself. 
 Don't smile ; your height baffled me. 
 Were you tall ? I detest short women. 
 Ah, you are tall, divinely tall. I probed 
 and weighed your every syllable, pored 
 over this little note, and then took up my 
 pen and wrote the stiffest and coldest reply 
 that I'could frame. 
 
 Is it possible this can interest you ? It 
 is full of interest to me. But you did not 
 guess I could talk so long, I fear, in answer
 
 HIS LETTERS 14* 
 
 to your careless question. Some other 
 time I will tell you when you first wounded 
 me ; I see now that you meant not to 
 wound, but you did. 
 
 Later. Your letter has come. There 
 are things in it I cannot speak of I have 
 become a slave you can say anything in- 
 sulting, cruel to me now. I can never 
 answer back any more, never say a word in 
 protest or defense. I am almost glad to 
 have you bruise me. To bear without 
 wince or outcry seems the only thing that 
 I can do for you. And when you are un- 
 just I feel not quite so downcast, so heart- 
 stricken at my unworthiness. I say with a 
 sad joy, " She is not perfect ! " 
 
 I would never tell her that I doubted, 
 though I have a hundred times more cause, 
 and though God knows my soul is shaken 
 and sick with doubt. Let me speak no 
 other word of that ; no, nor about another 
 thing your going away. My heart would 
 burst. Ah, let me be as those condemned 
 ones in the land Cortez won. They who 
 meant to slay them never told them the 
 day they were to die. They honored them
 
 142 HIS LETTERS 
 
 meanwhile, and feasted them, and bade 
 them mark, in their wild revelry, how blithe 
 is earthly life. 
 
 Must I tell you in so many words what 
 you know, and I have said a thousand times, 
 that I have long been discouraged, disillu- 
 sioned and lonely with a loneliness that 
 appalls and freezes like the tomb ? But 
 let me say no more. . . The past is past. 
 Here is the present ; the present, when I 
 know only that I love you, love you, love 
 you Ah, does the word enter your heart 
 as it empties mine ? love you with every 
 fiber of my body, every outflash of my in- 
 tellect, every pulsation of my soul. 
 
 Will I go to you anywhere where I may 
 see you, speak to you, and perhaps clasp 
 your hand ? Do you ask it ? Do you ask 
 me whether I will go to Paradise ? 
 
 Letter Forty-first. 
 
 MY DEAR MADAME : 
 
 With your gracious permission, I will 
 forego the pleasure of seeing you to- 
 morrow, or at any time hereafter. I per- 
 ceive that I made a profound mistake when
 
 HIS LETTERS 143 
 
 I urged you to see me. I should have 
 been content to do what no intelligent and 
 right-minded man could fail to do admire 
 your intellect and appreciate your heart. 
 I will confine myself hereafter to these 
 methods of regarding you ; but they are of 
 course incompatible with the gratification 
 of the sense of sight. I have been for 
 some hours reflecting on certain incidents, 
 and it is really curious how near I can 
 come to the truth, when I take the trouble 
 to think long and deeply. I am very far 
 from asserting that your senses would 
 never be stirred nor your passions inflamed 
 beyond the point of complete and utterly 
 exemplary control. I am quite too well- 
 trained a logician to base a conclusion on a 
 particular experience. Because I could 
 not make you love me as women love 
 when they really love, it does not in the 
 least follow that another may not. That 
 other I certainly should consider highly 
 enviable ; but as envy is a feeling uncon- 
 genial to my nature, I shall endeavor to 
 extirpate it with all possible promptitude. 
 I hope that in a few days, or in a week
 
 144 HIS LETTERS 
 
 at furthest, you will allow me to write to 
 you on topics entirely unconnected with 
 any personal, selfish desires of mine. It 
 will take a little time to entirely tranquil- 
 lize, clarify, and cool my mind. I have 
 heard of you as a woman who had made 
 many conquests, who had great knowledge 
 of the human heart. I congratulate you. 
 You are entirely at liberty to count me 
 among the former ; but kindly place me in 
 the sub-class that considered conquest suffi- 
 cient, and rebelled against torture. 
 
 I will never so help me God ! look 
 upon your face again. You will be wholly 
 free for the future from my importunities. 
 
 Believe me, dear madame, with unshak- 
 able respect and admiration, and if you will 
 permit me to add unvarying friendship, 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 HUBERT THORNTON. 
 
 Letter Forty-second. 
 
 Do not expect me, neither to-day nor 
 any other time. Although you seem in- 
 credulous, my letter expressed a deliberate 
 and inflexible resolve.
 
 HIS LETTERS 145 
 
 I pray you will not misunderstand me. 
 I have arraigned myself in the forum of my 
 own judgment. I have passed sentence on 
 myself and it will be executed. Two or 
 three times in my life I have had occasion 
 to look suddenly and with great closeness 
 at a situation, and tell myself what it 
 behooved me to do, if I desired to re- 
 tain my self-respect. My will has not, 
 as some persons might imagine, lost its 
 grip, and I have always been able to do 
 what I saw I ought to do to escape self- 
 contempt. 
 
 I agree with all wise people in desiring 
 to lead a dignified life. I perceive that I 
 should inevitably become ridiculous. I pre* 
 fer to retire to safe ground. There is one 
 stage upon which I positively have made my 
 last appearance. I am paying you a great 
 compliment. I know I am, however you may 
 regard it, whether with amusement, or with 
 annoyance at seeing the fly escape the 
 spider ; for when I renounce the hope of 
 being loved by you I shall continue the 
 most loyal and indefatigable of friends. 
 Of this you will get by and by convincing
 
 146 &IS LETTERS 
 
 proof. That was the relation which, if I 
 mistake not, you have always preferred ; 
 and there is no doubt that it is the most 
 sane, the most wholesome, and perhaps 
 most profitable to both. . . If you wish 
 me to speak to L. I will certainly do so. 
 If you dread his tongue it is enough. But 
 as for me, really I love to hear the buzzing 
 of an enemy ; it is music in my ear. I 
 have several times in my life had cause to 
 say with Othello, when they told him that 
 Brabantio and all of Desdemonas relatives 
 were about to arraign him before the 
 Council of Ten : 
 
 Let them do their spite : 
 My services which I will do the seigniory 
 Shall out-tongue their complaint. 
 
 Poor L. He is no Brabantio, for 
 Brabantio was a senator ; but since you 
 wish it I will say something to him. I will 
 ask him to dine. 
 
 With an homage profounder than I feel 
 for any human being, and with the most 
 devoted and unshakable friendship, believe 
 me, dear lady, 
 
 Sincerely yours.
 
 tfIS LETTERS 147 
 
 Letter Forty-third. 
 
 Of course my feeling has never wavered. 
 It is burnt into my heart, soul, and body. 
 It will live with me, but not die with me. 
 
 I know not how you could have misun- 
 derstood, but you are the noblest woman 
 that ever lived, the purest and the no- 
 blest. I thank you for your infinite com- 
 passion ... I sent the handkerchief back 
 because you said farewell forever, and I 
 have always told you that a word from you 
 would suffice. 
 
 You have saved me ; oh thank you, thank 
 you ! You little know my heart Make L. 
 show you a letter which I wrote to him an 
 hour ago. Even under sentence of per- 
 petual exile I have but one thought, to 
 serve you. I was faithful why not ? We 
 need must love the highest when we see it. 
 
 Letter Forty-fourth. 
 
 Dearest, dearest, I am coming at nine 
 o'clock. I cannot write another word. Oh, 
 I thank .you, thank you for the flowers. I 
 understood them. Are they not a sum- 
 mons?
 
 148 HIS LETTERS 
 
 Letter Forty-fifth. 
 
 I had gone out this morning to try and 
 find a few poor violets. I wanted to send 
 you something, for I simply could not write. 
 When I came home I found your note ; and 
 now I must write, I feel such a brute. I 
 will never, never say an ungentle word to 
 you again. When I wrote that last word I 
 was mad with disappointment, I had fallen 
 into great despair. I wonder will you un- 
 derstand exactly what my feelings were ; 
 for sometimes you seem to know what I am 
 feeling before I speak, and you write under 
 precisely the same impulse. It is as if a 
 thought could scarcely take shape in my 
 mind without its fellow thought being born 
 in yours. Had you been a little kinder to 
 me on Wednesday, I should not have had 
 that dreadful sinking of the heart yester- 
 day. You had been kind, but not half so 
 kind as you had said you would be. Ah, I 
 know it is not nice to remind you of those 
 sweet words of yours I only do it to ex- 
 plain myself I never will admit that I re- 
 member them again but compared with
 
 UTS LETTERS 149 
 
 them you were cold ; don't you think you 
 were? And to what could I ascribe the 
 refrigeration except to your having been 
 disappointed when you looked at me and 
 compared me with the man who wrote you 
 the letters which you had sweetly said you 
 liked ? I cannot be surprised at it. But it 
 is a terribly bitter thing to me, who found 
 you a thousand times more fascinating, 
 more maddening than I had thought or 
 dreamed you. . . . Well, with these mis- 
 givings racking me, shall you be angry if I 
 tell you that I asked myself whether your 
 indisposition was not feigned to enable you 
 to adjourn indefinitely a meeting for which 
 you found you cared but little ? You 
 had looked to me the very goddess of 
 health. Your scarlet lips were like twin 
 flames, and your eyes positively radiated ; 
 and though, of course, my intellect did not 
 for a second dispute that now you were ill, 
 my heart could not avoid a faint shiver of 
 distrust. Ah, as you once said so truly, 
 affection is one thing and love is quite an- 
 other. Distrust, doubt, suspicion, restless- 
 ness, are the inseparable symptoms of the
 
 ISO tfIS LETTERS 
 
 real malady; a malady indeed it is, a mal- 
 ady for which there is no remedy. Posses- 
 sion is a palliation of its deepest miseries, 
 perhaps, then, it may be that one would 
 have complete faith just for a little while 
 but the torture would begin again. Tor- 
 ture ! Yes ! but terrible as I find it, I would 
 rather feel it than any so-called pleasure 
 that another human being could bestow. 
 
 Letter Forty-sixth. 
 
 AFTER MIDNIGHT. 
 
 I did not think I could love you better 
 than I did, and yet, since our explanation 
 this afternoon, I do. Heavens ! no man 
 ever loved a woman as much as I love you. 
 No one could, because there never was such 
 a woman. I have read history, as very few 
 have read it, to find the women in it. That 
 is why it is interesting to hear me talk his- 
 tory. That is why you feel blood and life 
 in it. And I know there has never lived a 
 woman like you. 
 
 After leaving you, I had to drive out to 
 the country. Whenever I have been happy 
 near you, I crave motion, air, a wide hori-
 
 HIS LETTERS 151 
 
 zon, the things that eagles have. And 
 when I came home, I shut myself up and 
 pulled out your portrait, and I gloated over 
 it. Oh, the thought that this magnificent 
 creature, this radiant goddess actually 
 should care for me a little, filled me with 
 such intoxication that I almost lost my 
 reason. . . . Say it again to me, darling, say 
 it again ! Plunge me into ecstasy ... I 
 have been dreaming of you such sweet 
 dreams ! We were wandering in some lotus 
 land of enchantment, where all things spoke 
 of love and summer. Ah, I loved you . . . 
 Yes, your talents are virile, they are, in- 
 deed ; but all the rest, your heart and 
 body, is so intensely witchingly, madden- 
 ingly feminine. You exhale love ; you are 
 a flower. I should think that all little birds 
 and lovely insects, like butterflies, must cir- 
 cle round you in the spring-time. 
 
 In what new dress, in what new guise 
 will she meet me to-morrow ? I know not 
 I may not recognize her at first, but surely 
 I shall say, (< This is some daughter of Zeus 
 that blazes thus upon my vision !" 
 
 A demain, peerless one.
 
 I5 HIS LETTERS 
 
 Letter 'Forty-Seventh. 
 
 AT NIGHT, 2.30. 
 
 I have not slept. I have got up to speak 
 to you. I can find only this scrap of paper 
 and no pen. How lovely you looked to- 
 day ! the loveliest woman upon the earth to 
 me. And what a voice you have, and what 
 airiness, grace, sweetness of speech. Ah, if 
 I were blind I must have loved you. Yet I 
 have never puzzled myself with seeking to 
 discover the secret of your strange power 
 over me. I am satisfied to feel it ; I don't 
 want to know. The very thought of trying 
 to analyze you is shocking to me. It would 
 seem sacrilegious. I would not exchange 
 one little word from you, no, nor your 
 littlest finger, for all that the next loveliest 
 could say or give. I simply love you, love 
 you. You make me understand all the 
 foolish, beautiful, impossible, preposterous 
 things that men have done for love. I com- 
 prehend human life as it is and will be so 
 incomparably better for knowing you. You 
 might cast me off to-morrow, as I dare say 
 you will, and I should still feel myself
 
 HIS LETTERS 153 
 
 deeply grateful to you for the thoughts and 
 emotions and wishes that you have evoked. 
 Whatever happens I shall never be the 
 same man hereafter that I was before. You 
 have made me think better, not only of all 
 womankind, but of the whole human race. 
 God bless you ! 
 
 Later. You were en beautd to-day ; you 
 knew it. You will be resplendent at the 
 ball, and alas ! I shall not see you. 
 
 Listen, dearest, you believe, do you not, 
 for you have told me so, that I am free from 
 little egotisms. Well, if you do think that, 
 why is it don't be illogical why is it 
 that you can't believe me capable of un- 
 selfish love ? I am capable, and I will 
 prove it to you some day, if you drive me 
 to it by those doubts that kill me. What 
 a fate is mine ! never to have known love 
 until now, and now not to be believed. 
 Try to have faith in me ; you will not 
 be sorry. Remember you have no right 
 to think of anything but the present and 
 the future. Good-by ! but it shall be only, 
 shall it not, for a little while ? In this 
 letter I send you my whole heart. Oh
 
 154 HIS LETTERS 
 
 do not tear it up and throw it into the 
 street. 
 
 Letter Forty-Eighth. 
 
 You will have torn up my last letter. I 
 know it does not exist now. Yet I meant 
 to write gently ; I did, I think, but coldly. 
 A man cannot refresh anguish without 
 ice. I think it was rather noble not to tell 
 you that I was literally plunged into 
 despair. I am ashamed, ashamed to 
 acknowledge that of late, during the last six 
 or eight weeks, I have searched feverishly 
 the papers, in the hope that I might see 
 your name. You know what I saw yester- 
 day. . . . Let me tell you that I tasted the 
 agony of death. I could not breathe at all. 
 I rushed into the open air, and walked 
 miles, trying to collect my senses. You 
 had told me one thing, and here I saw 
 recorded another. " O God ! " I thought, 
 " there is no such thing as truth upon this 
 earth. There is no woman in the world, 
 not one, in whom a man can put his faith. 
 I was right when I said that morally there 
 was not one nice enough for me, I was
 
 HIS LETTERS 155 
 
 glad that I was going to be free for a few 
 days from what seemed a dreadful, shame- 
 ful thralldom. 
 
 That absence which I had looked fonvard 
 to with a sinking heart seemed to offer a 
 hope of a short escape, a short release. 
 
 Ah, let me tell you that the very founda- 
 tions of the earth seemed to have given 
 way. " How can I," I cried, "love a woman 
 who would do that ? " And yet I knew I 
 did love her ; that bruise my hands against 
 my chain as I might, I could never, never, 
 never rend it off. 
 
 The tears gushed from my eyes. It 
 seemed to me that even my manhood was 
 gone, my pride, the only prop I had, was 
 lost. 
 
 But look, I had the strength to tell you 
 not a syllable of this. I never would have 
 told you, did I not know to-day that the 
 man or woman who penned that story lied. 
 Oh, yes, he lied ; you tell me so, and I must 
 always believe you. May God leave me 
 this little gleam of trust. When I cease to 
 believe you I shall be that awful wreck a 
 man who cannot help loving one whom he
 
 156 HIS LETTERS 
 
 cannot respect. You will not chide or 
 blame me, I think, now that I have told 
 you all. 
 
 It breaks my heart to think of you as 
 ill ; you who are always the embodiment 
 and the picture of pure health. Oh, dear- 
 est, darling, eat something for my sake. 
 Drink the milk your physician orders ; get 
 well, get well quickly, for my sake. I com- 
 mand it ! You will, you can do it, for in so 
 exquisitely organized a being the soul can 
 well command the body. Say to yourself, 
 " He loves me, and he wishes it ; I will get 
 well ; I am well." 
 
 Letter Forty-nine. 
 
 Of course I want to see every line in 
 which your name is mentioned ; even if I 
 do not always like the substance of what 
 you send me. But I cannot say that I 
 revel in this incident. Yet I love the de- 
 licious womanly nature that prompted you 
 to send it. Oh, what an exquisite piece of 
 femininity you are ! There never was any- 
 thing so sweetly, so beguilingly, so entranc- 
 ingly feminine as you are in heart, soul, and
 
 HIS LETTERS 15 7 
 
 body, in your instincts and impulses, in gait 
 and gesture, in all your looks and ways and 
 thoughts and feelings. Oh, you were made 
 to bless the man whom you should deign 
 to care for ! Cleopatra, Marie Stuart, Mar- 
 guerite de Valois were kitchen maids to you. 
 The man whom the splendid Heloise lets her 
 deep eyes dwell upon may well be mad with 
 pride as well as love. I am devoured with 
 both passions. Don't you wish it to be so ? 
 But perhaps you don't. Perhaps you would 
 rather have me answer your questions. 
 Let me try then, dearest, to please you in 
 that way. 
 
 George Meredith's style ? His style is 
 simple and lucid enough in dialogue, and it 
 used to be in narrative when, in 1858, he 
 published his first story, " Evan Harring- 
 ton." But since, and more and more, when- 
 ever he speaks in his own person, he has 
 chosen to be gnarled, occult, inscrutable, 
 oracular ; and naturally, readers are an- 
 noyed, as they are in the case of Browning, 
 to find that the kernel really is not worth 
 the difficulty of cracking the shell. When 
 one comes to think of it, who is Meredith
 
 IS 8 ,HIS LETTERS 
 
 and who is Browning that they should not 
 take the trouble to make themselves as in- 
 telligible at a glance, to persons of moderate 
 parts, like myself, for instance, as Shak- 
 spere, Milton, Victor Hugo, Pascal, Virgil, 
 and Homer are ? It is sheer laziness or 
 ridiculous conceit, or a mixture of both, and 
 verily they have their reward ; for they 
 lose, now and hereafter, nine-tenths of the 
 readers they might have had. Fame in the 
 highest sense cannot be theirs. To get 
 fame you must be intelligible to more than 
 a little knot of patient, nut-cracking dis- 
 ciples. 
 
 I supposed Miss D. to have been married 
 long ago. There is a notion current 
 whether correct I know not that mar- 
 riage broadens, softens, and sweetens the 
 feminine mind. By the way, I always 
 thought one of the best of them, so far as 
 natural aptitude was concerned, was C. 
 She had no beauty, but I once saw her act 
 in some private theatricals, and I remember 
 I was much struck with a betrayal, a revela- 
 tion of emotion. 
 
 Your dear letter reached me on Saturday,
 
 HIS LETTERS 159 
 
 about two hours after I had sent forth a 
 despairing plaint. I do not exaggerate 
 when I say that I have read it thirty times. 
 
 Letter Fiftieth. 
 
 Oh, how sweet it is to commune, dearest, 
 with your lovely soul ! Oh, my God, with 
 what profound and what pathetic affection 
 I adore you. You almost make me die 
 sometimes when you imply or seem to that 
 you think I love you only in one way. 
 Alas, I do love you in that way ! Who 
 could help it that once had looked in your 
 lovely eyes and pressed your hand? But 
 you have no idea what an elevating and 
 stimulating influence you have on me. 
 With you my brain grows so prolific that it 
 could give forth work as a fountain plays. 
 But near you I could do nothing. I would 
 deem it sacrilege to waste one of the pre- 
 cious moments that might never occur again. 
 How happy I have been to see you ! Hap- 
 pier than ever before in my life. You see, 
 I never knew what love was before ; but 
 you have taught me, my adored one. It 
 really is incredible what fertility and vigor
 
 160 HIS LETTERS 
 
 of mind you give me. And nothing could 
 chill my heart but cold words from you. 
 What else could cast so much as the faintest 
 fleck of cloud over my devotion ? Oh, 
 I am desperately fond of you. I hunger 
 for the pressure of your hand. I am mad 
 to kneel before you and kiss your little 
 foot. How beautiful you are ! 
 
 Adieu, my queen, my love, my idol. 
 
 Letter Fifty-first. 
 
 Every day that passes when I do not see 
 you leaves me more and more depressed. 
 It is only for the first few hours after we 
 part that I can forget to be unhappy. 
 Yesterday I sighed in vain for a letter, and 
 I wanted one because it worried me to 
 think that on Tuesday evening you would 
 get a horrid note that I had posted. I 
 tried to make you promise not to read it, 
 but I could not. You can do anything 
 with me, but I, alas, cannot even persuade 
 you not to open an envelope. I should 
 think I was dominated ! 
 
 How I wished yesterday that I could 
 have been with you in the country, have
 
 fffS LETTERS 161 
 
 passed that perfect day near you. Oh, it 
 would have been a heaven upon earth ! 
 Would we not have walked upon the sea- 
 shore, dearest, and should I not have felt 
 your hand upon my arm, and should not 
 my eyes have fed on your sweet face ? 
 
 As it was, I sat for several hours by the 
 river. 
 
 In one of your most gracious moments 
 you announced to me lately an inclination 
 to think that I was actually becoming 
 respectable. Such flattery quite staggered 
 me. But I really wish you could have 
 seen me at the L.'s, a miracle of deportment 
 and the very ideal of the frump. I wore a 
 carefully composed countenance, in which 
 were judiciously mingled complacency, gen- 
 eral philanthropy, special benignity. It is 
 a shame that you do not see me in these 
 my creditable moments. 
 
 In answer to your question, I will say 
 that the phrase of which you speak occurs, 
 I think, in the dispatch sent to Mazarin by 
 the Prince de Conde, after the battle of 
 Rocroi. Their victory on that field cost 
 the French dear ; but it was worth the cost,
 
 162 HIS LETTERS 
 
 being the first time that Frenchmen had 
 beaten Spaniards in nearly a hundred and 
 fifty years, since Gonzalo of Cordova armed 
 his men with pikes, and drew them up 
 in those deep phalanx-like masses the 
 famous tercios. 
 
 There, I should answer your questions 
 more punctually. How can I when there is 
 only one thought in my mind ? I love you, 
 worship you, adore you, noblest, dearest, 
 most beautiful of women. Ah, if this were 
 midsummer I should persecute you. As it 
 is June, and you are not free, will you not 
 at least be generous to the most desper- 
 ately enamored of men ? 
 
 Letter Fifty-second. 
 
 My heart's beloved oh, you, the woman 
 without whom I cannot live happily one 
 hour, and whom I would not survive a 
 minute how could you bruise my heart by 
 wasting one precious page on a wretched 
 trifle to which I would never have given 
 a second thought ? Never would I have 
 mentioned the thing except that I deemed 
 it possible you might some time see
 
 HIS LETTERS 163 
 
 Mrs. ; and I desire to warn you of 
 
 her mischief-making propensity. Did you 
 imagine her words could have any influence 
 on me ? Ah, sweetest one, how could you 
 believe this so soon, before the roses that 
 you gave me had faded, before the hand- 
 kerchief that I stole had lost its fra- 
 grance a fragrance that makes me hot and 
 faint by turns with passion? How could 
 you suppose that a man who loves you as 
 you know that I love you could be shaken 
 by a silly word ; could be shaken by any- 
 thing, aye anything that you yourself might 
 tell me. There is nothing you could do that 
 would not be perfect in my eyes, and would 
 not make me adore you more ; you could 
 not disenchant me. Ah, but you do not 
 yet know the wondrous alchemy of love ; 
 you have yet to learn it. ... The last time 
 that I wrote how could I speak ? Your 
 injunctions had tied my wings and loaded 
 me with weights. Even my thoughts were 
 paralyzed and could not fly to you. But 
 listen, if ever again you accuse me of 
 indifference, I will dispatch a letter that 
 will scorch the mail-bags and set the train
 
 164 HIS LETTERS 
 
 on fire ; and lest it should by some chance 
 reach you, I warn you to take out a large 
 policy of fire insurance on your house. 
 
 My darling, let us never speak or think 
 again of such a miserable trifle as the spite- 
 ful speeches of envious women. Here- 
 after, should such things enter my ear, I 
 would forthwith bury them, encyst them in 
 my brain. 
 
 . . . When you write to me again say 
 that you care a little for me. Say that I 
 may see you once again. Next week is your 
 birthday. May I send you some flowers? 
 I worship you, you know it ! 
 
 Letter Fifty-third. 
 
 I have your telegram. My darling, of 
 course Mrs. - - said it. But that proves 
 nothing, does it ? She will repeat it when 
 I go up there, for I shall go, with a resolve 
 to stamp out that nest of your enemies. 
 Ah, I shall be very nice to them until they 
 have said all that they have to say how else 
 shall I know what to answer ? but when 
 they have ended I shall have my innings. 
 Do you think that my beloved will suffer
 
 HIS LETTERS 165 
 
 then ? You have no occasion to feel indig- 
 nant. I welcome the opportunity of meet- 
 ing the envious creatures who would drag 
 you to their' level. Take in exchange for 
 your charming woman's vanity a dash of my 
 Satanic pride, that cares not an iota what 
 anyone but the loved one thinks. Why, 
 suppose you had said the thing, sweet ? 
 Do you know it would have flattered me ? 
 It was as if you had put your little foot 
 upon my neck. Have I not once kissed 
 your slender footprints in the sand ? I 
 almost wish that you had said it. Am I 
 not your slave ? Say what you will of me, 
 for you are generous and noble, and I 
 know you would not say a word that was 
 not just. 
 
 I am infinitely better and higher for hav- 
 ing known you. Tell me that you do not 
 feel that knowing me has deteriorated you. 
 Oh, that is a terrible thought you once 
 hinted at ; how cruel to a man who would 
 die for you ! You didn't mean it, did you ? 
 It would kill me to* think you meant it. 
 Tell me that you are not sorry you ever 
 knew me. Tell me ! the fault can be rem-
 
 1 66 HIS LETTERS 
 
 edied. Tell me quickly. Don't miss a 
 mail. 
 
 Letter Fifty -fourth. . 
 
 Oh, when I break out of Capua, and 
 set up my standard on the hills, all the 
 discontented and the clever will rally 
 around me, for they know that I do not 
 fear. What should I fear when I think of 
 thee? 
 
 I shall not answer the first letter. It 
 plunged me into sadness. Oh, what irony 
 of fate that sent me, for the first love of my 
 life, the only one that ever filled my heart, 
 into the camp of enemies ! It was a rape 
 of the Sabines that this son of Romulus 
 was driven to attempt ; and yet I have 
 never heard that those lovely Sabine women 
 hated their Roman ravishers after the fell 
 work was done. Strange, strange beyond 
 revelation are the revulsions of nature ! 
 Oh, how I should love you ! To doubt it 
 is to dishonor your inevitable fascinations. 
 When you speak thus* you dishonor me, I 
 almost hate you almost I could not hate 
 you utterly.
 
 HIS LETTERS 167 
 
 Alas ! a sight of her, a word from her 
 would recall me to a sanity. 
 
 Letter Fifty-fifth. 
 
 I have just returned. I am free at last 
 to write to you where and when I like. I 
 came home with my heart full of tenderness 
 and passion, and I find a dreadful reaction 
 in a letter that fills me with despair. I 
 cannot bear such letters. What do you 
 mean by saying that I struck at you ? I 
 struck at fate, which, it seems, has spoiled 
 my life. And you can say that I struck at 
 you ! Oh, you are a tigress ! . . . You 
 never had these reactions when you were 
 
 in M before you saw me. Now you 
 
 have them. The inference is too obvious. 
 You say you have wondered what I thought 
 of you that evening in your boudoir. 
 Don't you know what I thought of you 
 then and always ? But I give up, I throw 
 up the sponge, I am beaten. What use of 
 struggling longer ? for you see I love 
 you, whatever you may think ; and if my 
 loving you as a man ought to love a woman 
 makes you unhappy, for God's sake let me
 
 1 68 HIS LETTERS 
 
 love you in another way ! I can do it. At 
 least, I will try. . . . Before you went away 
 you never wrote me these doubtful, suspi- 
 cious, insulting letters. Do you wish never 
 to see me again ? Say so if you will be 
 happier. . . . Why don't you know that 
 only one woman in a million can feel love, 
 and only one woman in ten millions can 
 evoke it ? You haven't the faintest concep- 
 tion of what a man would do who feels as I 
 do. You cannot love, the idea is ridicu- 
 lous. Alas, alas ! I hoped for happiness 
 when I got back, but it was not for me. 
 Adieu dear / 
 
 Letter Fifty-sixth. 
 
 Sweetest one, it is the curse of absence. 
 No one seems to have noticed it, that 
 if you do not correspond, and really love, 
 all is well. A man, at all events, who 
 felt as I feel for you, would never change. 
 A woman might, because she has more 
 vanity. Ah, you are vain, dearest, so vain, 
 and I love you for your vanity. But- to be 
 absent and yet correspond, oh, that is ruin. 
 One receives a letter written in one mood,
 
 HIS LETTERS 169 
 
 One answers it it is received in quite 
 another mood, as the next letter shows. 
 And who suffers? The lover. It is always 
 his fault, no matter what happens. How 
 cruel is your last letter ! Why do you say 
 such things to me? Of course you think 
 them or you would not say them. But if I 
 were a woman I would not bruise a man 
 who had traveled day and night to get her 
 letters a few hours earlier, by such self- 
 divulgations as this. But alas ! you know 
 your power. You know that you can say 
 anything to me, and you abuse it. Ah, 
 how funny it seems to me to hear you pre- 
 tend to care for me. Of course you do it 
 only out of sympathy and compassion. It 
 is ill done, madame, an under-study. 
 
 Letter Fifty -seventh. 
 
 Why do you sometimes say to me I ask 
 dear, humbly, sadly for whenever I recall 
 the words they plunge me in sorrow why 
 do you speak as if you feared, should you 
 ever come to share a little of the feeling 
 which in such awful intensity I have for 
 you, it would cause you to look downward
 
 170 HIS LETTERS 
 
 and not up ? If that be truly your appre- 
 hension, banish me at once, and utterly. 
 Tell me the reason of the banishment and 
 I will not utter one word of protest or 
 appeal. It would kill me to think that 
 knowing me had lowered you in your own 
 esteem ; but I will submit in silence. I 
 love you a sentiment li^ce mine is a grand 
 orchestra, and sweeps the whole gamut of 
 emotion, from the noblest aspiration to the 
 fiercest appetite. I love you too tenderly, 
 devoutly, and unselfishly to ask for any- 
 thing which it would hurt your heart to 
 give. But how can it be possible that any 
 feeling you can conceive for me should 
 have an effect opposite to that produced by 
 my love for you ? Why, so quickening, 
 lifting, and electrifying is your influence 
 upon my mind and heart as well as body, 
 that I positively dread, I feel ashamed to 
 see anybody lest the source of my moral 
 elevation and mental excitement should be 
 penetrated. I cannot talk with any intelli- 
 gent person upon any interesting subject 
 without my face so lighting up, and my 
 tongue pouring forth such a flood of
 
 HIS LETTERS \1\ 
 
 imagery that I know they say, when I am 
 gone, " What has happened to Thornton ? 
 Something strange must have befallen him, 
 for he is thrice the man he was." I know 
 they say this, for I sometimes catch them 
 looking at me in a surprised, inquisitive, sus- 
 picious way. If your name had been men- 
 tioned, one might account for this, but it 
 has not been for weeks. The last time it 
 was, I made it clear that I thought it ques- 
 tionable taste for men who had not the 
 pleasure of knowing a lady to talk of her; 
 so it can't be that. It is the profound, 
 potent, all-pervasive, clarifying, dignifying 
 influence that the thought of you exerts. 
 Oh, why should I exercise on you an in- 
 fluence the dismal and deadly opposite ? 
 It is a dreadful, dreadful thought ; but do 
 not for an instant fancy that I presume to 
 chide you. You tell me the truth, and it 
 is the truth that is so horrible. 
 
 What could be the thing I said to you 
 that you liked ? I will try again. Was it 
 what I said when I likened you to Arte- 
 mis? No? Then was it what I said about 
 violets that were crushed on someone's
 
 172 HIS LETTERS 
 
 bosom ? But I have said things since, that 
 it would break my heart to think you did 
 not like better than anything I said before. 
 But who can tell what a woman so dis- 
 tractingly lovable, so mysterious and beauti- 
 ful, may be thinking or feeling at a given 
 hour ? Let us rather stand breathless, 
 trembling, awaiting good or ill, the gods' 
 design. Ah, when you think of me, shiver 
 at the thought that you possess over a 
 human being the power of life and death. 
 The angel of destruction could not fell me 
 to the earth more quickly and more surely, 
 with a touch of his icy finger, than you 
 could with a word. 
 
 Letter Fifty-eighth. 
 
 Only a woman of genius, who is also con- 
 scious of exceeding loveliness, could have 
 invented such a birthday gift as I received 
 on Friday morning. A mere beauty would 
 not have thought of it, because she would 
 have had neither the needed brains nor 
 heart. And there are many women of 
 brains and talent who would not have car- 
 ried out the thought, indeed, being but too
 
 HIS LETTERS 173 
 
 sadly aware of the fact that there was noth- 
 ing in a glimpse of their faces and their 
 figures to make to a lover all the difference 
 between heaven and earth. But you knew 
 that if I were sitting at the furthest end of 
 an opera house, where I could descry but 
 faintly your face far distant, the sight of it 
 would cast me into a delicious trance. And 
 your voice the sound of it would, if I were 
 blind, make me as amorous as poor Milton 
 was when his hot imagination had to play 
 the part of eyes. But my birthday gift 
 meant more to me than the sight of a coun- 
 tenance of matchless loveliness, and the 
 sound of a voice that makes a plaything of 
 my heart. Do you know how proud of you 
 I am when you do a fine, original, bold 
 thing like that ? Ah yes, you are as much 
 astray in this century as I am. But no, we 
 are not astray since we have found each 
 other. 
 
 Letter Fifty-ninth. 
 
 SUNDAY. 
 
 What a fool I was ever to imagine that I 
 knew what love was before ! I never got a
 
 174 HIS LETTERS 
 
 glimpse of him, never even guessed how 
 terrible, yet how delicious he could be. 
 
 Oh, I wish I had not asked you that 
 question yesterday. It broke from me in 
 my torment. You say, " I know not jeal- 
 ousy." My God ! no woman could know it 
 as I know it. Her frame would be too 
 weak to bear it. But I do not speak of it 
 not often I am too proud to let you see. 
 But that question was blasphemy. After I 
 had sent the letter, I hung over your picture 
 for an hour. That mouth and chin, oh, 
 who could read them as I do, and not 
 loathe himself for the thought that prompted 
 such an insult ? Why they are the very 
 home the altar of modesty, of purity, of 
 chastity inviolate alas inviolable. Ah, 
 there speaks that which may well drive a 
 lover to despair, there speaks Artemis ; oh, 
 Heaven, I divined her ! All the rest is 
 Venus, but that, Artemis. That was what 
 the old Frenchman saw : his dazzled eyes 
 were not at fault. Oh, I told you that you 
 were fashioned to drive men crazy, while 
 you yourself are sane and cold. You will 
 never love, never, not as women were in-
 
 tilS LETTERS 175 
 
 tended to love men. There will always 
 arise in you the stern, implacable protest of 
 the priestess who defends her temple's sanc- 
 tity. But what a dreadful fate is mine, to 
 love for the first time, and such a woman ! of 
 the mystic dual nature that dooms a man to 
 pine unsatisfied. 
 
 Later. You like me to tell you every- 
 thing, don't you, dearest ? I am ravished 
 when you speak with absolute liberty to me. 
 May I tell you, then, that with all your pre- 
 tensions to be a woman of the world, in 
 certain things, you seem to me the simplest 
 and most artless child. I so want you to un- 
 derstand me ; sometimes you say you do not. 
 But you will, you will if you let me speak 
 to you with complete freedom. By and by, 
 you will have faith in me, will trust me, 
 will believe every word I say. Ah, it is a 
 beautiful thing for two human beings to 
 wholly believe in one another. That is one 
 of Heaven's bridals, 
 
 There are things that as my eyes rove 
 over that dim transcript of your loveliness, I 
 would fain say to you but dare not. The 
 brows, the eyelids, the eyelashes, the tell-tale
 
 1? HIS LETTERS 
 
 nuqiie, that column of ivory, your throat, the 
 splendid proportions and diviner promise 
 of the arm. And oh, God ! the budding of a 
 bosom which a deity would renounce heaven 
 to touch ; but I dare not, I dare not. The 
 purity of that mouth and chin appall. Stay 
 ever in the clouds, sweet Artemis. De- 
 scend to earth not for one hour ! What 
 would befall him who knew you once only 
 to lose you ? 
 
 Letter Sixtieth. 
 
 Do you think there is any fun at all in 
 such a sentiment as possesses me, when she 
 that inspires it and controls it with a breath 
 is absent ? I am wretched, miserable ; I 
 suffer the tortures of the damned. 
 
 I cannot answer questions. I cannot 
 write on commonplace subjects. What is 
 to be done for such a hopeless case of mal 
 d' amour as this ? 
 
 I have at this moment received your 
 letter. The first part of it was freezing ; 
 you were annoyed with me. But the last 
 part of your note, just a few lines of it, 
 was heavenly. Ah, my loved one, say it
 
 HIS LETTERS 177 
 
 again ; let me have that music ever in my 
 ears ! As a rule you are infinitely more 
 reserved than I, when we are together. I 
 know not what has come over me, for to 
 you I think and feel aloud. I don't under- 
 stand it ; I never felt before this wild 
 desire to tell everything. I have a wish 
 that there were a window in my heart for 
 you. There is absolutely nothing that I 
 would conceal from you. What bliss it is 
 to me to feel such perfect love and trust as 
 that ! I don't mean of course, dearest, that 
 I am not jealous of you. God forbid. I am 
 mad with jealousy ; but I am too wise to 
 borrow trouble. I don't need to borrow. 
 You say things that throw me into a fever 
 of fear and foreboding. Oh, don't make 
 me jealous ; spare me that. I know my- 
 self ; I shall be wicked, cruel. I am capable 
 of hurting the being that I would die for. 
 No, no, I am not ; that sounds like a 
 threat ; and do what you like, alas, I have 
 no rights, not even the rights of a lover, no, 
 not even his. 
 
 Dearest, she that wrote the " Hep- 
 tameron " was a charming woman, and like
 
 178 ms LETTERS 
 
 most women of her time, had probably 
 discovered what love meant. From my 
 soul I pity the man or woman who dies 
 without such learning ; yet ninety-nine 
 thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine in 
 a hundred thousand do. They know not 
 love. I see it but too well. Thank God 
 that you have taught me ; for with that clew 
 the whole tangled skein of human life is 
 easily unraveled. But about Marguerite ; 
 she was the niece of the author of the 
 " Heptameron," she was the sister-in-law of 
 Mary Stuart, the sister of Charles the IX., 
 and Henry the III., and the first wife of 
 Henry the IV. She was not only the 
 loveliest, but the cleverest, the sweetest, and 
 the gentlest woman of that delicious time. 
 Of course, being born in that epoch, she 
 could not lead the life of a nun, could she? 
 Did she not fall in love ? It was she who 
 when her first love, la Mole, was done to 
 death, for her sake, caused his heart to be 
 cut out of his body, and treasured it. Do 
 you think that horrible ? I think it most 
 beautiful. It was she who, for la raison d'e- 
 tat, was married against her will to that
 
 bandy-legged, red-haired little rascal whom 
 fools glorify as Henry of Navarre. She 
 would never let him come near her, except 
 in public, and turned him loose to browze 
 in meaner pastures. But in the Saint 
 Bartholomew ah, she had a heart like 
 yours, the sweetest and the kindest she 
 saved the husband that she loved not, how 
 think you ? By putting him where the 
 spadassins of her brother and her lover, the 
 Due de Guise, would never look for him 
 under her bed. And yet the wretched 
 Gascon lad, when he came to the throne, 
 forgot that he owed his life to this sweet 
 lady, and humbled her and repudiated her, 
 because his vanity was galled at her refusal 
 to have him as a lover. The charges 
 against her are nothing. She was the best 
 woman of her time. Perfect ? Had she 
 been perfect she had been less lovable. 
 
 What right have you to be such an 
 enchanting, splendid creature, scattering 
 destruction on every hand ? Do you want 
 to be the scourge of the human race, or one 
 man's happiness ? Have you made up 
 your mind ? Tell me, say it. Oh, your
 
 180 HIS LETTERS 
 
 words go through me as if I had clutched 
 an electric wire. But you will never love 
 me a thousandth part as madly as I love 
 you. You could never convince me of that 
 by words. Ah, noble, tender woman, don't 
 you know that I love you as no other 
 woman of this hour is loved, upon this 
 earth ? Don't you know it, believe it, feel 
 it, in every fiber of your loveliness ? How 
 can you then keep me away so long ? 
 
 Letter Sixty-first. 
 
 I was delighted to hear about G.'s appre- 
 ciation of your talent. I would rather 
 have his commendation than a unani- 
 mous verdict from all the rest. I thank 
 you, dear, for telling me at once these things 
 that make, and ought to make you happy. 
 
 How beautiful you are. Do you know 
 that every line of your face, and every tint 
 and every curve of your body are so im- 
 pressed upon my retina that I can see you 
 at this moment, with wonderful distinctness. 
 If you had no figure at all your face would 
 make you a sorceress, and if your face were 
 always masked, your figure would drive men
 
 LETTERS 181 
 
 crazy. But you are absolutely free from 
 the desires which you arouse in others the 
 serene and placid condition of the immortal 
 gods. Yes, Aurora, I do not believe that 
 you care much about Tithonus. You are 
 just amusing yourself with him, because you 
 find him, in some particulars, a highly sen- 
 sitive and nervous subject. You like to 
 make emotional experiments. If the vic- 
 tims don't fully appreciate the aesthetic pur- 
 poses to which they are put, tant pis pour 
 eux. For my own part, I am well content 
 to serve as the provoker of the hard thinking 
 which goes on in that little head. As for 
 mastering the heart that should go with 
 such a pretty head, I have ceased even to 
 aspire to that. If that admirable mansion 
 has a tenant for life, it is not me. You 
 have not even deigned to say that you have 
 not changed your mind about Monday, or 
 to name the hour when one may call and see 
 you. I shall expect to receive a telegram 
 putting me off. Ah well, that sort of thing 
 may be fun to you, but it is death to me. 
 
 Alas, I wish I could believe that if I died 
 to-morrow, you would remember me a single
 
 1 82 ff IS LETTERS 
 
 day, that you felt a millionth part of the 
 love, passion, worship, adoration, madness 
 that I feel for you. 
 
 Letter Sixty-second. 
 
 \ have seen you now in four ways, and a 
 large part of my time is spent in trying to 
 make up my mind how I like you best. Of 
 course, in your rich evening gowns, when 
 you reveal most, you are most deadly. But 
 the problem is too complex to be solved on 
 that simple principle. It is not to be denied, 
 at all events, that in that simple girlish cos- 
 tume, in your atelier, you were bewitching. 
 And yet I felt afraid of you. How often have 
 I dreamed of carrying you off, and secreting 
 you from the eyes of men, away upon that 
 enchanted shore of which I have spoken to 
 you. But I know now you would not long 
 be happy thus. You are a woman, thank 
 Heaven, although a princess; and therefore 
 you have some of a woman's captivating 
 weaknesses. It is your sex that makes you 
 different from me in one particular that you 
 care what people say about you. You think 
 you don't, and yet you do ; you can't help it.
 
 HIS LETTERS 183 
 
 You don't care much while what they say 
 isn't true, but the moment that you felt it to 
 be true you would care. Ah, how well I 
 know you ! Of course I do ; it is like know- 
 ing myself with nothing but the sex 
 changed. And so, dear, since, although you 
 do not more than half believe it, it is your 
 welfare and your happiness that I care for 
 more than the slaking of my own mad pas- 
 sion, we will, if you like, exchange in our 
 imaginings the island for the altar. This is 
 a tremendous sacrifice for me to make ; for 
 I foresee that, could I marry you, to a man 
 of my disposition, life in the world with you 
 would be a hell on earth. So long as I do 
 not see things I can, with an effort, put 
 certain thoughts away ; but if I were to 
 see a man look at you in a certain way, 
 I could not keep my hands from his 
 throat. 
 
 Oh, I am quite impracticable, I recognize 
 it now. I understand why the Greeks speak 
 of jealousy as green. Green ? yes, I should 
 turn green. It is a silly thing to say, but 
 you were right in guessing that I have not 
 before known what jealousy is ; but Heavens,
 
 1 84 HIS LETTERS 
 
 I know now ! And when I think of the 
 agonies it would inflict upon me, I say, " Oh, 
 never mind what people say ; let us take the 
 island and a steam-yacht ! " But alas, alas, 
 you could never be contented alone with me. 
 And yet I think you care for me a little. 
 Ah, have I not read it in your eyes, and 
 quivering lips, at last? And that last letter" 
 of yours, is it not the letter of a woman who 
 loves, loves in. all the delicious and enchant- 
 ing ways which the soul and body can invent ? 
 I have drunk of that letter and it has given 
 me joy. 
 
 Letter Sixty-third. 
 
 What a roguish and provoking crea- 
 ture you are ! You see I am still in the 
 sighing stage, sighing like a furnace, and 
 wondering what a certain lovely woman can 
 be made of to say such pretty things and 
 do so little. Oh, Solomon was right ; there 
 are three things that I cannot understand, 
 yea, four that are unintelligible unto me. 
 But really the way of a cony among the 
 rocks was straight and obvious compared 
 with the way that this fair lady has of play-
 
 HIS LETTERS 185 
 
 ing with one whom she teases by pretending 
 to call her lover when she knows that he is 
 not. But if I cannot have anything else, 
 tease me more. Give me another letter 
 quickly, give me a "volume." I am much 
 amused at what you tell me about T. 
 Fancy a man's head being turned so easily ! 
 How convenient such men must be. If I 
 were a pretty woman, fond of studying the 
 male of my species, but not overburdened 
 with passions myself, that is just the sort of 
 man I would have about me. I wouldn't be 
 bothered with people that are always clam- 
 oring for more. I wish I were a pretty 
 woman. No, I don't. I fear that with my 
 temperament I should surrender at the first 
 fire, and that would never do, would it ? 
 Come, imagine that I am a woman, and 
 give me sage advice. About how long do 
 you think that I ought to hold out pour 
 r honneur du drapeaii? A whole day, a 
 week ? Oh, that is impossible ! You see, we 
 have not all of us your regal self-control. 
 We have got more of the slave's instinct, 
 that when it sees its master drops. You 
 must adapt your counsel to our weakness.
 
 1 86 HIS LETTERS 
 
 We cannot all play with fire entirely un- 
 singed, as you do. 
 
 Ah, would that I might kill you with my 
 love ! 
 
 HUBERT. 
 
 V 
 
 Letter Sixty-fourth. 
 
 If I were a woman I should shudder at 
 possessing such power over a human being 
 that one glimpse of my face would make 
 the difference between hell and heaven. 
 
 I have ceased to expect or believe in any- 
 thing. For a whole week I had been look, 
 ing forward to seeing you. You knew that 
 I was unhappy, and that the only ray of 
 light upon my life was shed by you. Yet, 
 without the faintest provocation, you robbed 
 me of those days ; and,^to make my outlook 
 for the future entirely hopeless, informed 
 me that every living woman would have 
 done the same. I take leave to doubt that 
 assertion, but of course your making it 
 means that at any moment you may repeat 
 the torture to which you have subjected me. 
 Oh, I was glad to go away and stay with my 
 dogs, who at all events do not breathe hot
 
 HIS LETTERS 187 
 
 and cold a dozen times a day. My heart 
 was like a lump of lead, when I went tfl 
 my place. It is certain that only a man 
 free from other causes of unhappiness, and 
 an idle man at that, with nothing to do but 
 fret and dream, has any business to fall in 
 love with a woman of your type no, not 
 your type there is no such type, you are 
 unique. I wish I had the strength to break 
 my bonds. I cannot bear such heartless 
 treatment. As I told you at the time, you 
 were thinking only of your own self, and 
 not in the least of the pain you were inflict- 
 ing on another. What is that but the quin- 
 tessence of selfishness ? You have cared a 
 little for my letters, but for me you have 
 not cared. I exert over you no personal 
 attraction. Do you prefer that I should 
 write to you and never see you ? Why 
 don't you say so ? 
 
 I don't believe that you are coming to 
 town. I shall believe it only when I see 
 you. You will have had time to change 
 your mind a dozen times, and send me 
 twelve contradictory messages. I have lost 
 all faith in any of your promises. I trust
 
 1 88 HIS LETTERS 
 
 this letter will please you. It is made to 
 your own order, and carefully adapted to 
 the meridian where you dwell. 
 
 Letter Sixty-fifth. 
 
 Thank you, dear angel, for forgiving the 
 brutal words that you found awaiting you 
 on Tuesday evening. I must have been 
 mad to call you selfish. It is I that am a 
 monster of selfishness toward you. It is 
 strange and dreadful that it should be so, 
 for I don't think that I am particularly sel- 
 fish where others are concerned. It is only 
 toward my adorable beloved that I am so 
 brutally and fiercely and unmercilessly sel- 
 fish. At this moment I am almost weeping 
 from contrition and yet I know that to- 
 morrow, if my eyes pounced upon your face, 
 or an hour hence, if my imagination should 
 picture your beauty too vividly, I should be 
 just as bad as ever. What will you do with 
 me, tell me what ? 
 
 What a child you are ! Why don't I in- 
 vite you to my place ? Because you are 
 always, there uninvited, you live there. 
 Whose face but yours is it, do you suppose,
 
 HIS LETTERS . 189 
 
 that is always wooing my eyes to wander 
 from those that speak to me, and fasten 
 themselves, in a kind of ecstasy, on what 
 the blind people round me believe to be the 
 viewless air ? Whose voice but yours en- 
 chants my ear, and deafens it to all meaner 
 music ? I don't wonder that some people 
 say that I am losing my mind, because I no 
 longer seem to have the faculty of atten- 
 tion. Others, much more penetrating, say, 
 "He behaves as if he were infatuated with 
 someone." Ah, they must indeed be ob- 
 tuse who cannot penetrate my secret ! 
 
 Letter Sixty-sixth. 
 
 When I began that letter which I wrote 
 yesterday, my heart was full of the most ar- 
 dent love ; but it overflows now with bitter- 
 ness when I think what the loss of those 
 two days has meant to me. Why, they are 
 gone ; no one can give them back to me, 
 not even you. Life is just so much the 
 smaller and poorer for that loss. Oh, it was 
 a cruel blow to deal a man that loved you, 
 and for what cause, think of it ! Oh, let 
 me assure you, madame, it is really incon-
 
 19 HIS LETTERS 
 
 venient to have a too ardent lover. I have 
 often read that the over-ardent make fear- 
 ful mistakes and lose the good-will of the 
 adored one, where cool-headed ones might 
 win. But what good does another's wisdom 
 do us ? How can one be wise when one 
 is burnt up with love, desire, and passion ? 
 And so and so there have been moments 
 I shiver to think of it when I positively 
 hated you. I hated you as a child hates 
 the hand that hurts him. I could find no 
 excuse for you, as I was whirled by a tem- 
 pest of indignation and regret. 
 
 You know that it is only out of your 
 sight that I grow frantic. At the sight of 
 you I am a lamb. Ah yes, you know it. 
 What am I to do ? Don't you see that it 
 is agony to love a woman as I love you. 
 Do you like to see me writhe in agony ? 
 How can a woman like it ? You say I am 
 all at sea in such things. Thank God, I 
 am ; I would rather be at sea than on land 
 so pitiless and rockbound that a lover's 
 sore and desperate rebellion provoked only 
 a superior smile.
 
 ffSS LETTERS 19! 
 
 Letter Sixty-seven. 
 
 I have had three, three happy days : I 
 adore you for giving them to me. I never 
 knew happiness before. To be near you 
 wakes a maddening fever in my veins. I 
 forget where I am ; I lose my own iden- 
 tity. 
 
 What delicious ideas and inventions you 
 have ! What a glorified Eden of love is 
 the imagination ! Think of your buying 
 that pretty little cup and saucer, and bring- 
 ing it to me, by way of our beginning house- 
 keeping on our little island ! I had no idea 
 that I should become so wildly fond of tea ; 
 but a first sip is not enough from that pretty 
 little pink cup. I hope that it will be more 
 than a sip the next, time. I want a deep, 
 scorching, intoxicating draught. 
 
 Yes, your ways are enchanting. They 
 make me recall the sentence with which 
 Brantome used so often to introduce anec- 
 dotes : Void une autre gentille et piquante 
 fafon a' amour. 
 
 When shall I see you ? You seem very 
 far away to-day, and it is only in my dreams
 
 192 HIS LETTERS 
 
 that I can look into your sweet and bashful 
 eyes. 
 
 Do you know that you are one of the 
 proudest women in the world ? Ah yes, 
 she that I love is a delicious combination of 
 pride and tenderness. How blessed be- 
 yond expression would be the man whom 
 such a one could condescend to love ! 
 
 I have always said that for genuine pas- 
 sion, the sort of ardor a man feels himself, 
 one must either look among the people, the 
 very humble people, from whom actresses 
 are recruited, or to a great lady. The pas- 
 sions are feeble, if not entirely extinct, 
 among the bourgeoisie, or even among what 
 one would have to admit were ladies, but 
 not great ladies. They are such slaves of 
 convention that their passions, if they were 
 born with any, are starved to death. But a 
 great lady can be above conventions. 
 
 Oh, that I might be in the country with 
 you to-day ! to wander with you in the 
 woods, or on the sands, where I could turn 
 my head over my shoulder and mark your 
 foot-prints, and stooping kiss them. But 
 you will never love me as I love you, never.
 
 HIS LETTERS 193 
 
 As to the degree of your sentiment for 
 me, I am rent with doubt and anxiety. 
 I shall give you back the ribbon. You 
 must wear it for me a little while, for it has 
 lost a little of its maddening perfume. 
 Good-night ! f 
 
 Letter Sixty-eighth. 
 
 ... I must write to you again to-night. 
 Oh, you lovely creature, I have seen your 
 picture ; I cannot tell you what I think of it. 
 I will not until you answer this one ques- 
 tion. Ah, answer it, my queen, my em- 
 press. Tell me exactly when you began to 
 paint it, and when you ended it. Ah, tell 
 me that ; it will mean much to me, and tell 
 me the truth, as I tell you. Oh, yes, you and 
 I alone, of all mortals, always tell the truth 
 to one another. Ah, how great, how great 
 you seem to me ! It is simply not possible 
 that you should care for me. Oh, you are 
 the heaven-sent genius! You cannot, can- 
 not care for me. My God ! My God ! how 
 I do worship you ! All my life I have been 
 dreaming of a woman to whom I could talk 
 in shorthand. Men used to tell me that if a
 
 194 HIS LETTERS 
 
 woman were as well educated, as accom- 
 plished, as talented as I desired, there 
 would be something wanting in her heart or 
 her body. I laughed them to scorn. " You 
 think that brains would make a woman less 
 desirable ? You have read history in vain. 
 I have not, no, I have not. There have 
 been such women, and it must be that one 
 exists shall I find her?" 
 
 And now you are ill. You are over- 
 worked. You cannot eat. When you re- 
 ceive this letter, get up at once ! I order 
 you to do so. Do you hear me ? He that 
 you thought a slave has suddenly become a 
 sovereign. Get up, do you hear me ? and 
 eat a beef-steak. I will kill myself if you 
 cannot receive me before I leave. 
 
 Oh, my love, my love, my love, send me a 
 line to-night ! 
 
 Letter Sixty-ninth. 
 
 Do you know, madame, that you have 
 had the honor of making me cry? I don't 
 mean crying for you, that wouldn't be so 
 strange would it ? But crying over the 
 child of your hands, over that little tragedy
 
 HIS LETTERS 195 
 
 in your painting. Ah, you don't know 
 what a triumph was that, and what a con- 
 summate proof of power. If you could so 
 sway me, how will you sway others ? Less 
 what shall I say less on their guard, 
 less tough, less rock-like ? Yes, there is more 
 genius in this little thing than in any of its 
 predecessors. How could you write to me 
 then, as you did, that you were discouraged ? 
 That you " could not paint " ? Well, I gave 
 you a good scolding then for your self-depre- 
 ciation, and if you ever dare to say that to 
 me again, I will let me see I will whip you 
 with little rods made of young sugar canes ! 
 
 Oh, but I am proud of you ! How heav- 
 enly sweet you are to say that I may give 
 you a little present. Tell me what was in 
 your mind. Can it possibly be the same 
 thing that I have thought of, and wondered 
 whether you would be pleased or annoyed 
 that I should send you ? 
 
 You can judge how easy it is for me to 
 go away from you, when I tell you that 
 last week there was a desperate effort made 
 to take me away for three weeks. Every- 
 thing was to be done ; I should have noth-
 
 196 rns LETTERS 
 
 ing to do, and a prospect of lots of money. 
 Do you know, I actually had to pretend to 
 accept, but I speedily invented an iron-clad 
 excuse, and telegraphed it. 
 
 Had I painted this picture that you have 
 done, I would have dozens of copies strewn 
 all over my rooms. How dreadful that 
 you are ill. 
 
 Now if you don't obey me and rise from 
 your couch, and eat something immediately 
 and stand firm on those pretty legs, what 
 shall I do to you ? Alas, I forget La reine 
 d? Espagne ria pas de jambes. 
 
 Letter Seventieth, 
 
 In the name of God, do not protract this 
 fearful agony a moment. Say something 
 to me put me out of this terrible pain. If 
 you mean never to see me or write to me 
 again, oh, say so. Let me know the worst 
 quickly, quickly. It is fiendish to leave me 
 for four days in suspense. 
 
 I was mad on Wednesday ; I know not a 
 word I said. Whatever I said I abjure it 
 with my head in the dust. But as there is 
 nothing, nothing but love and adoration for
 
 HIS LETTERS 197 
 
 you in my heart, I could have said little 
 that should wound you very deeply. It is 
 the very test of love that even in his rage 
 he does not. 
 
 In the fiercest heat of my disappointment 
 and my anger you must have seen that you 
 possessed my heart, that its every beat and 
 throb are yours. I admit that I was wholly 
 wrong, that I had no cause for wrath, that 
 everything you did was right, that there is 
 nothing you could do which could justify 
 such an outburst. Alas ! I admit every- 
 thing, for what am I but a poor miserable 
 slave. One does not trample as you do on 
 a* slave. One is more merciful when one is 
 all-powerful. But I want your sympathy 
 and your forgiveness, not your pity. I will 
 not have your pity, there is no room for it 
 in the same heart with love. Akin to love 
 she may be, but she is love's poor relative, 
 allowed to frequent the ante-room, but not 
 the presence 'chamber, where the princess 
 is enthroned. No, I'll have none of her. 
 But forgive me, forgive me, once more for- 
 give ; and for God's sake send me a word 
 at once, one word.
 
 198 ffIS LETTERS 
 
 Letter Seventy-first. 
 
 My heart is too much wrung to command 
 service of my voice. I cannot speak, I can 
 only throw myself upon your mercy, and 
 I can only weep in an agony of contrition 
 and self-contempt. 
 
 Listen, dearest ah, let me call you dearest 
 just this once I must tell you something 
 now that may seem to criminate my con- 
 duct, to make it worse. I do not want to 
 have to tell you this when I am allowed to 
 see you. As it turned out, there was 
 no cause for the cyclone of fury and an- 
 ger which burst upon me when I saw, as I 
 thought, all my hopes shattered in an hour. 
 I can no longer claim the honor of unsel- 
 
 o 
 
 fishness. It was of myself that I was think- 
 ing when I poured out upon you those 
 angry and cruel words. But no, I cannot 
 write it. I will tell you, if you deign to see 
 me, how I discovered that on that terrible 
 Wednesday, the stars, after all, had been 
 fighting in their courses for me. Nothing 
 was as I supposed. Don't say that this 
 makes me still more unpardonable. How
 
 HIS LETTERS 199 
 
 could anyone foresee such an interposition 
 of destiny on my behalf? Until I met you, 
 fate was always against me. How could I 
 realize that you had changed the dice ? 
 
 You have not received the cry of despair 
 that I sent to you yesterday afternoon, 
 when I found from your silence that another 
 night of horror lay before me. Ah, when 
 did I refuse to answer a word of yours ? 
 When I sent you letter after letter and tele- 
 gram after telegram, and I found you meant 
 to leave them all unanswered, hell could 
 have held no surprises for me. But why 
 should I speak of these sufferings, since I 
 deserved them, and since you will at least 
 permit me to see you once more, and tell 
 you on my knees how repentant and 
 ashamed I am of my mad conduct, on that 
 horrible day ? Oh, perhaps, if it were an- 
 other man's cause, I might, even on this 
 paper, plead it in such a way as a little to 
 allay the just and intense resentment that 
 you feel. All I will say now is that you 
 must remember that it was only the fear of 
 being kept away from you that maddened 
 me to speak those cruel words ; and that I
 
 200 HIS LETTERS 
 
 was already dazed and half beside myself 
 by something unkind you had said on meet- 
 ing me. 
 
 Yet how strange it seems to me ; these 
 tortures which would have made me hate 
 another woman, have only made me adore 
 you more. 
 
 Letter Seventy-second. 
 
 I waited until six o'clock, and then came 
 home in despair. Home ? It has been like 
 a grave to me. This morning I was nearly 
 dead your silence had almost killed me. 
 Do you think it hurt me less because I 
 knew I had deserved it ? Ah, yes, God 
 knows that I deserved it for saying, under 
 any circumstances, and no matter what I 
 thought, a single harsh word to a woman so 
 sweet, so .sweet as you. Have you im- 
 agined for an instant that I did not appre- 
 ciate your infinite sweetness and your good- 
 ness ? Yes, it was your very goodness, 
 your heartfelt wish to be good and to make 
 me good that provoked my resentment. 
 Was there ever anything so horribly 
 wicked ? I wanted to be bad, and I grew
 
 HIS LETTERS 2OI 
 
 fearfully angry, because I saw that you did 
 not feel as I did ; or rather because I saw 
 that you were so incomparably better a 
 woman than I was a man. I thought and 
 said, in my frantic folly, that I could better 
 bear never to see you than to see you only 
 as a friend. But I lied. I must see you. 
 I could not live without it. If I wanted 
 proof, these last few days have given it. 
 Ah yes, they have taught me that whatever 
 you wish I must submit to ; that anything, 
 anything, everything is bearable but to lose 
 the sight of your face and the sound of your 
 voice. Ever since Thurdsay, when I woke 
 up with a start to a sense of what I had 
 done the iniquity of it before I got your 
 sentence of banishment, I have scarcely 
 slept at all. For two days I had not eaten. 
 In the wildest agitation, on Thursday even- 
 ing, I wrote you a few lines of incoherent 
 appeal ; and I sent you a little message on 
 Saturday. And I hoped, hoped with a 
 fainting hope, that I might get one word 
 from you on Monday. But I did not. 
 And then Tuesday also passed still si- 
 lence oh, I have been punished enough.
 
 202 HIS LETTERS 
 
 Don't punish me any more ; I cannot sup- 
 port it, I am worn out with suffering. 
 Heavens ! how incredible it is that one 
 human being should be able, just by silence, 
 to give such awful pain to another. 
 
 When I telegraphed, this morning, I did 
 not mean to write. I wanted to speak by 
 word of mouth. I am so trammeled when 
 I write. But I could not wait. I must 
 ask you . . . don't you care for me any 
 more ? Will you never care for me any 
 more ? I do not ask you to forgive me, but 
 I implore you to spare me, and to still, still 
 like me a little. I love you a thousand 
 times more than ever. The more I suffer 
 the more ardently I love. But don't, on that 
 account, make me suffer any more just now. 
 Give me a little respite. Why, formerly 
 I used to think myself unhappy ; but what 
 was that to the unheard-of misery that I 
 have gone through in the last few days ? I 
 simply could not have supported it longer. 
 The limit of endurance would have been 
 passed to-day. 
 
 Heavens, dearest let me call you so once 
 more is it possible that I am going to
 
 HIS LETTERS 203 
 
 see you again and to-morrow ? I can't be- 
 lieve it. I shall not believe it until my 
 hungry eyes pounce upon your lovely face. 
 Oh, will that face be cold, or far worse, sad ? 
 Then what will become of me ? I shall be 
 speechless, but at least I can look at you. 
 You know not what joy that will be to me. 
 I love you, I never loved you so des- 
 perately as I do at this hour. I am insane 
 with the desire to see you. Would to God 
 that to-morrow afternoon were here ! 
 
 Letter Seventy-third. 
 
 It is just half an hour, my love, my love, 
 since I found your sweet, forgiving letter. I 
 would to God at this moment I could be- 
 dew your pretty feet with tears. Alas, I 
 had thought for a moment that you were in 
 the wrong, but it is always I. Oh, darling, 
 with the infinite kindness which you have 
 always shown to me, listen to me for a mo- 
 ment, while I show how I could so fearfully 
 misunderstand. Ten minutes before I 
 reached your house I had obtained and read 
 a heavenly letter which was still warm on 
 my heart, when I met you at your door, and
 
 204 HIS LETTERS 
 
 you informed me not only that you could 
 not see me at your house that day, but that 
 you never would unless I came simply as a 
 friend. It simply meant dismissal. I was 
 dazed, bewildered, and you will remember 
 that through our walk you said nothing in 
 explanation, until we reached the riverside, 
 after which something else occurred. Do 
 you think it was wholly strarige that it 
 seemed to me, if I was to be sent away, that 
 it might have been done by letter, and 
 without exposing everything to news cater- 
 ers to the public? But about that I should 
 have cared literally nothing, if I had not 
 supposed that I had lost you. Ah, dear, 
 my heart, I trust, is large enough for pity 
 toward those who have few friends. But 
 you are the only woman, sweet one, that I 
 have ever loved upon this earth. You have 
 taught me what love really is, a terrible, 
 delirious, delicious thing. 
 
 Letter Seventy-fourth. 
 
 I wish so inconsequent is man when he 
 is agitated that you might have glanced 
 at my letter before seeing me. Perhaps,
 
 HIS LETTERS 205 
 
 then, you would have been to me less cold 
 and implacable than I fear you will be now, 
 I am afraid to see you. I am certain that I 
 shall shiver when I mount your stairs. Ah, 
 I know well you can be, when you choose, 
 what Milton calls " terrible to approach." 
 But I shall come. I would not miss the 
 chance of seeing you if I knew that I had to 
 die. Say what you will to me, treat me as 
 you please. At least I shall have looked at 
 you and listened to your voice once more. 
 What an idiot I was to say that I could not 
 bear a Platonic attachment ; that to this I 
 preferred nothing. Why it was a lie ; a few 
 hours would have proved it to me. Any- 
 thing is a whole world better than nothing. 
 If I were never to see or hear from you 
 again, I could not and would not live an 
 hour. No consideration of compassion for 
 others could restrain me, for I should not 
 be master of myself. I could not bear the 
 awful gloom and loneliness that would en- 
 compass me. But there I will not ask you 
 to forgive me ; you do not like it, and I 
 would not have you do it if you would. It 
 is not your forgiveness that I want, it is
 
 206 HIS LETTERS 
 
 your love. Yes, love, in spite of my wick- 
 edness to you. I know that what I said 
 was wicked. I hate myself for saying it, 
 but I loved you all the time, and, oh, you 
 knew it. You knew that by your silence 
 you consigned me to the most frightful tor- 
 ture. You did well, dear one, to be angry, 
 but don't be angry any more. Be once 
 more sweet to me. Don't you think you 
 can ? Oh, at all events, let me love you. 
 
 Letter Seventy -fifth. 
 
 I have your letter. Then you had cared 
 for me a little ; I really was convinced you 
 did not. I was frozen. I had put this and* 
 that together. I was sure you had cast me 
 off forever. I couldn't bear it. My God, 
 what have I suffered ! Why, I love you to 
 distraction. I must see you. I am going 
 to take this to your door. If you are not 
 at home I can leave it. Let me see you 
 again ; I cannot live without you, I love 
 you. 
 
 These last days I have seen only your 
 enemies. How I hate them. I hate every- 
 one who stands between me and you.
 
 HIS LETTERS 207 
 
 Oh, don't poison me again with your cold- 
 ness. Don't make me jealous. 
 
 Oh, I am so changed ! I have been ill ; 
 you will not know me. 
 
 Dear, give me a word. 
 
 Letter Seventy-sixth. 
 
 Ah dearest, my own darling, my precious 
 one, I am like a man that was dead and am 
 alive again. When I left your door, I did 
 not walk, I clove the air. The wings that 
 I lost had sprouted from my shoulder ; I 
 looked about me with delight and ravish- 
 ment. The streets, I dare say, were black 
 with mud, but to me they seemed paved 
 with ivory and pearl. The men and women 
 that I met were doubtless sordid and 
 shabby, but to me they seemed to have 
 angel's faces, and they stared at me as if I 
 were a man in a trance. One thought was 
 always singing in my breast. . . . Heavens ! 
 what a blissful, what a heavenly reaction ! 
 Since I got up to face another day, with 
 conviction that I should never see her 
 again, that I had lost her, lost her through 
 my own mad folly.
 
 208 HIS LETTERS 
 
 And now, darling, I must confess it, 
 though it is a feeling which a man with any 
 pride despises, that it is a wild jealousy 
 which greatly increases the tortures of 
 separation from you. I am always on the 
 look-out for material to feed that detestable 
 passion. You are so inexpressibly sweet, 
 I know, that I ought wholly to trust you ; 
 but I can't. When I am with you I be- 
 lieve ; but alas, when I am away from you 
 doubt returns. . . . How can you say that I 
 don't like you to tell me the smallest details 
 of your life ? I love it, except when you 
 tell me of the many men who surround 
 you. You didn't mean me to like that, did 
 you ? But everything else you tell me 
 delights me. Why, dearest, when you are 
 in good spirits you do not so much talk as 
 sing. It is like the carol of a lark. Carol 
 to me to-morrow, darling ; ah yes, write to- 
 morrow, sweet one, that I may get it on 
 Monday, and possess my soul in patience. 
 What a love you are ! There never was 
 such an enchanting creature. Even your 
 anger sets my brain on fire. 
 
 I have just read your last letter for the
 
 HIS LETTERS 209 
 
 twentieth time ; and I cannot control my 
 agitation. 1 have had to pace my floor. I 
 have been thinking of your beauty, that 
 beauty from which a lover might drink the 
 very wine of life. Never was there so 
 superb a beauty, so regal, so imperial. I 
 am sick of looking at pictures and statues 
 since I have seen your matchless loveliness ; 
 and such vitality, such magnetism, such a 
 flame of love shoots from every fiber of 
 your entrancing body. 
 
 I can write no more. Good-night ! 
 
 Letter Seventy -seventh. 
 
 Your dear telegram* sent to me by , 
 
 comforted me a little ; but I have been in 
 the depths since I parted with you, and I 
 know not what will become of me. Yes, 
 there is something of the tigress in you. 
 You have the cruelty of that animal. You 
 like, I think, to look at suffering. I am not 
 going to speak of your rebukes, which 
 wasted nearly half of four precious, irrevoc- 
 able hours, except to say this : you say that 
 you would not reprove me if you did not 
 care for me. That is true. It is a proof of
 
 210 HIS LETTERS 
 
 love, but a sad one. Are there not others 
 more becoming a sweet and noble woman 
 like yourself ? might you not as well say 
 that the destructive lightning is, after all, 
 an outcome of the same mysterious force 
 which has other products beneficent and 
 beautiful, which draws man to woman, and 
 which is so strangely potent in your own 
 lovely body, dear one ? And does it never 
 occur to you that if your reproofs have the 
 power to wound me so deeply and so long 
 it is because I love you so much ? Have 
 you not observed how indifferent I am to 
 the opinions of others, to their praise or 
 their blame ? Ah, is it not almost cowardly 
 to twist around a knife in a breast which is 
 invulnerable except where it beats for you ? 
 Then, dearest, I have a hot, fierce temper 
 myself ; and I shudder lest some day I 
 should be provoked, by what seems to me 
 injustice, to speak again bitter words, I 
 know not what, which I should all my life 
 long be sorry for. But there let me say 
 no more. 
 
 Do wear the roses in your bosom, for my 
 sake, which I send.
 
 tfIS LETTERS 211 
 
 Letter Seventy-eighth. 
 
 Your heart told you that my heart would 
 ache, and so you sent me that pretty box. 
 The flowers have had more kissing than 
 any flowers, even yours, deserve, except 
 that loveliest of scarlet blossoms, your 
 beautiful mouth. But you are not mine, 
 you are not mine, and you never will be ! 
 
 It was an enchanting little letter that 
 came with the roses, and yet I sighed when 
 I had read it. Not, dearest, that I was not 
 comforted to think that you suffered a 
 little, or that you suffered as well as I. 
 That was a comfort. One yearns for sym- 
 pathy in pain. What made me sigh was 
 the unconscious revelation in the note, of 
 the limitations of your feeling for me. 
 Alas, I am a great philosopher in love, 
 doctor in amore. I would I were not. In 
 such things it is indeed folly to be wise. 
 But how much happier I should be if I 
 could deceive myself ! But I see so 
 clearly, I see that you are so sympathetic, 
 so gentle, so generous, so womanly, that 
 when you find a man is really in love with
 
 212 HIS LETTERS 
 
 you, you give him a soothing species of 
 responsive tenderness that would beguile 
 any man, and may even for a little while 
 deceive yourself. But I recognize also 
 that you are the last woman in the world 
 to control yourself, if Aphrodite had truly 
 marked you for her own. Heavens, no ! 
 one might as well attempt to chain a whirl- 
 wind. I remember saying something like 
 this to myself the first time I ever saw you : 
 " This entrancing creature," I thought to 
 myself, " would, I have no doubt, speak 
 most sagely about duty ; ay, and make 
 every word good in act. She knows, how- 
 ever, that she blasphemes a little when she 
 talks of love, that she takes in vain the 
 name of a great and terrible god, who 
 knows of no compromises, no divided 
 allegiance, no escape, no rescue. This 
 woman will be in love with love, rather 
 than with her lover. The conflict between 
 love and duty ah me ! the wise ones 
 know that such a conflict is unthinkable. 
 You remember the mediaeval legend 
 Tennyson treats it, I think, in one of his 
 idyls about a pretty boy, who masquer-
 
 HIS LETTERS 2*3 
 
 ades in the arms of the knight invincible, 
 and essays to keep a certain pass. At the 
 mere sight of that terrible armor, many a 
 good warrior gives way, and yet, as it 
 turned out, anyone who would but sit his 
 horse firmly, and poise his lance steadily, 
 and confront the masquerader, would have 
 overcome him at a stroke. But you see it 
 was not love, the knight invincible, that 
 was worsted in that fight, but only one of 
 his many winsome and elusive counterfeits. 
 To a woman that loves there is no 
 tragedy like that of love unsatisfied ; no 
 spectacle so piteous as the prayerful eyes 
 and wistful lips of an unrequited lover ; no 
 emotion so profound, so mighty, so irresist- 
 ible as the stirings and upheavings of a self- 
 immolating passion. I will talk no more 
 of that. I have spoken once to show you 
 that I know, and so that you hereafter, 
 looking back, may say, " He knew me 
 better than I knew myself. I deceived my- 
 self, but he was not deceived." I will 
 speak no more on this subject, for I am 
 well aware that not by argument can love 
 be evoked where it exists not. If a woman
 
 214 tflS LETTERS 
 
 loves not, whose fault is it? surely not 
 hers, the man's. Men ought to remember 
 this then ; they would be able to retain at 
 least their self-respect. 
 
 Alt revoir, sweet lady, you have prom- 
 ised to see me. Do you repent already 
 of the promise ? You need not. I am go- 
 ing to succumb to the situation. We will 
 speak only of art to-day. 
 
 Letter Seventy-ninth. 
 
 You have no more conception of the 
 depth and height and fervor of my love for 
 you than a child fifteen years old would 
 have. If you had, it would be utterly 
 impossible for you to misconstrue me as 
 you do sometimes. .There is nothing you 
 could do except one thing that I would 
 not think beautiful because you did it. 
 But you are eternally accusing me of 
 things that I am not guilty of. Do you 
 think me capable of deliberately lowering 
 myself in your esteem ? Do you suppose 
 that, if there had been what you imagined, 
 I could have mentioned that person's 
 name to you ? That I would not have
 
 HIS LETTERS 215 
 
 avoided it as I would the plague ? Some- 
 times I am sad unto death. It is a mad- 
 ness to me to think of all the years that I 
 have missed. Do you think I have no 
 cause to weep for them, those years, lost, 
 lost, irrevocable ? O Heavens ! what a 
 knell is that word ! For if I had known 
 you then my life would not have been 
 shadowed with the awful tragedy which 
 darkened it so long, a tragedy I have never 
 spoken of to a human being, which I can- 
 not speak of now. Had I known you all 
 would have been different. 
 
 Do you know why I chose those par- 
 ticular roses yesterday ? Do you not 
 know that the tender, soft, pale pink of 
 their inner petals recalled to me the blush 
 on your fair cheek ; and the satin skin of 
 my queen's foot as it gleams through the 
 stocking's mesh of lace ? 
 
 I dreamed last night we were upon our 
 island. Oh, how much nicer you are upon 
 our island and in my dreams than you were 
 when I last saw you, than you will be to- 
 day ! There, you seemed to want me, 
 dearest, near you, almost as much as I
 
 216 HIS LETTERS 
 
 want you. You have no wish to torture 
 me. On Wednesday you were of ice. 
 Oh, what fibs you tell ! It is your only 
 fault. You don't keep your promises, 
 madame ! You take advantage of the fact 
 that your creditor is altogether too nice to 
 dun you. You keep a man for weeks in a 
 state of intolerable agitation, and then push 
 him away with your soft palm. But alas ! 
 although I am bold as a lion on that island, 
 I am dreadfully afraid of you when I see 
 you. 
 
 Letter Eightieth. 
 
 How dare people get married, and how 
 without shame can they live together in 
 certain close relations, when the only feel- 
 ings they know are but the pale ghosts of 
 mine? Did you ever see a man look at a 
 woman as I look at you ? Why my eyes 
 are insatiable. They never let you es- 
 cape. Yes, just to look at you can almost 
 quiet me. Oh, no, quiet is not the word, 
 control, not quiet ; and let me tell you, 
 I have gazed at you so long and tenderly 
 that I foresee the time will come when
 
 HIS LETTERS 217 
 
 we shall know what we are thinking 
 without the help of speech. That will be 
 inconvenient for you, dear, will it not ? I, 
 however, shall not mind it in the least. 
 I have not a thought which I would not be 
 glad that my beloved should see, for I 
 haven't one that does not point to her. 
 
 Letter Eighty-first. 
 
 I know what you are doing is going to be 
 a fine and noble piece of work. If you are 
 depressed about it, that means nothing ex- 
 cept that you are a woman of superior tal- 
 ent, no, of genius, and therefore cannot help 
 fastening your eyes upon minor shortcom- 
 ings more than upon noble achievements. 
 You see you are aiming at a star, and if you 
 happen to miss, you will not condescend to 
 notice that your arrow has far outflown all 
 others that have been shot this year or last. 
 It is just like you to want to return good 
 for evil, to say something kind about that 
 person who attacked you. 
 
 What you said about wanting to dance 
 with me touched me so much. How well I 
 understood what was in your mind. It is
 
 218 HIS LETTERS 
 
 in my mind also. Ah, how I long to claim 
 you in the sight of God and man ! How 
 proud I should be of you ! You know that 
 I love you as you deserve to be loved, and 
 you know also that I deserve to be loved 
 even by such a glorious, magnificent daugh- 
 ter of passion as yourself. I live only in 
 the present and the future. I never lived 
 before. My past is dead, sealed with seven 
 seals. Ah, do not you unseal it ! Remem- 
 ber only that I love for the first time, that I 
 love to distraction. 
 
 I must thank you, loveliest and dear- 
 est, for the sweet letter I got yesterday, the 
 first since I pressed your perfect hand at 
 parting, and watched my goddess pace away. 
 How well I understand every phase and 
 current of your exquisite yet ardent nature ! 
 I thank God that I am qualified to under- 
 stand a being at once so delicate, so noble, 
 and so impassioned. Yes, I know why you 
 seem to shiver at one moment, and to shrink 
 half fearful from him that adores you ; and 
 in the next moment yield your spirit in the 
 abandonment of love and faith. All this 
 time I can think only of two things how
 
 HIS LETTERS 219 
 
 you looked when I last saw you, and how 
 you will look when I see you next. 
 A bientot, dnie de ma vie ! 
 
 Letter Eighty-second. 
 
 Oh, would to God, my darling, that we 
 were living together in some enchanted 
 island, where it might be my blessed privi- 
 lege to be your servant, to do everything 
 for you, you lovely little dear ! It is agony 
 to me to know that anyone else has the 
 right to do the smallest thing for you. 
 Let me thrust that thought away ! Why 
 do I so often use diminutives to you, such 
 a tall and stately creature ? Ah, He*loise 
 Helo you say is the pet name, what a 
 sweet name those little words fall instinc- 
 tively from the pen of love, when it is a 
 man who holds it. Yes, it is the deep- 
 planted virile instinct 'that forces him if 
 only to soothe his wounded heart to 
 think of the beloved one as utterly depend- 
 ent on him, as wholly, entirely his own. 
 My pride is tortured by our present situ- 
 ation, and what balm it would be if I 
 could claim you in the sight of man and
 
 220 HIS LETTERS 
 
 Heaven. And yet that is the weakest of the 
 reasons why I should not be satisfied with 
 being the lover of a princess, but should 
 long to be her husband. Heavens, what it 
 would mean to me to be absolutely certain 
 that I should see you every day, that every 
 night you might be near me ! How could 
 we ever know satiety? It is only common 
 souls that know it. Did Antony and Cleo- 
 patra know it ? Oh, what ecstacy it would 
 be to work for thee ! You asked me 
 once how you had changed me. Why the 
 change goes to the very root of things. 
 Before I saw you I considered my life a 
 failure, manqute, and I was dying of atrophy 
 of heart, of the collapse of hope. But 
 since I have the rapture of knowing you, 
 how can I think my life a failure ? A glori- 
 ous triumph, rather, a towering elevation. 
 Ah, you have given * me such energy, such 
 quickened instinct, such vibrating sympa- 
 thies, such an intense interest in human life. 
 What do I not owe you ? pleasure only ? 
 the divinest that ever mortal tasted ? Oh, 
 no ; that is only a fraction of my debt. 
 I boil with indignation when J hear of
 
 HIS LETTERS 221 
 
 the silly, waspish, and brutal attacks upon 
 your work. Listen to me ; I shall speak 
 soberly and disinterestedly. I know as 
 much as most of those who venture to name 
 you. I insist that this single picture, the 
 first that I ever saw, would have given the 
 artist a great reputation. There is in all 
 you do skill, insight, sympathy, imagina- 
 tion, pathos, and infectious life breathes 
 on your canvas. You would never be 
 attacked were you a poor, unknown, un- 
 envied person ; but you are a great lady, 
 beautiful, admired, puissante, and it cuts 
 to the quick a lot of less successful 
 aspirants for fame, who have borne the 
 burden and heat of the day, to see you at 
 the eleventh hour, by virtue of the added 
 splendor of your talent, stretch forth a 
 shapely, languid hand, and calmly pluck 
 the guerdon for which they have perspired 
 in vain. Ah, pity the poor things, my own ; 
 they but disclose their own sufferings. 
 They cannot harm you. . . . All the really 
 competent, penetrating critics who have in- 
 tellect enough to be candid, and who can 
 afford the luxury of self-respect, have said
 
 222 HIS LETTERS 
 
 as much and more and better. You know 
 that to be so. Then do not let these ants 
 have the satisfaction of stinging a being 
 whose mind and heart they are too grovel- 
 ing to understand. 
 
 Dearest, don't be angry with me for hav- 
 ing sent you such a scorching letter yester- 
 day. I should not send such missiles ; I 
 swear that I will do so no more. But I 
 had been parted from you so long, and the 
 mere glimpse that I had of you heaped fuel 
 on the flame. Ah, what torment in Dante's 
 catalogue was comparable to what I suffer, 
 to know you so near and not to see you, 
 not to be able to fall at your feet. Yet I 
 hope that you read that letter ; although I 
 know full well it exists no more. 
 
 Letter Eighty-third. 
 
 I have your letter, the second. Ah, dear- 
 est, how beautifully you write to me. I have 
 reproached myself far otherwise. There 
 are certain moods in which I am whirled 
 like a leaf in a storm. I have sworn to my- 
 self that in such moods I will run from a 
 pen instead of seizing it, They are not my
 
 tftS LETTERS 223 
 
 only moods, ah, no; nor are they dominant. 
 I give you my word of honor that if you 
 deliberately say to me by letter, not by 
 word of mouth, for I should need time to 
 collect myself that to make me happy 
 would make you unhappy, there is such 
 boundless love and worship in my soul for 
 my darling, that I could be to you what 
 Dante was to Beatrice, or Petrarch to 
 Laura. Oh, yes, I could I feel it I could 
 live upon your letters and never, to my 
 latest breath, would a thought stray from 
 her that I adored. This is true ; it is 
 heaven's truth. I love you, dear, as a saint 
 might wish to be loved, and if I love you in 
 other ways, and sometimes speak of them, 
 it is because I see you so little, and get just 
 enough to make me frantic. Do I not, 
 thou darling of my soul ? Oh, my God ! I 
 cannot help it, it is not my fault but fate's, 
 that since I have seen you and touched 
 your hand I have desired you fiercely. 
 
 But if you misjudge me I will kill myself. 
 This is no idle threat ; it is the cold state- 
 ment of a fact.
 
 224 HIS LETTERS 
 
 Letter Eighty-fourth. 
 
 Ah, sweet one, never have I loved you 
 more devotedly than at this moment. Your 
 two beautiful letters of Saturday and Sun- 
 day, enclosed in one envelope, have just 
 come into my yearning hand. Never, I 
 think, since writing was invented, did woman 
 write to man words at once so tender and 
 so intoxicating. Dear, I can never have 
 enough of them. I love you so madly, am 
 so utterly, completely thine, that I cannot 
 be told too frequently that you care for me 
 a little. You have not, have you, any con- 
 ception of what rapture you give me with a 
 tender word ? I love you more and more, 
 daily and hourly ; though I thought months 
 ago that my heart was swelled to bursting. 
 But there is no end to the devotion that 
 you evoke. You speak to me in every 
 beautiful sight, in each delightful tone and 
 odor, in each enchanting or elevating 
 thought. You inform the atmosphere with 
 hope and love. Would to God that at 
 this very instant your little bronzed shoe 
 were on my neck. But what does my dar-
 
 HIS LETTERS 22$ 
 
 ling mean about pitfalls? Do you appre- 
 hend danger from any source ? Enlighten 
 me. I do not wonder you are distrustful. 
 
 So you didn't like Mrs. C.'s black eyes ; 
 no more did I. To think that you should 
 fancy that the man you stooped to could 
 admire eyes of any tint but yours ! But 
 the poor thing who led such a dreadful life 
 with C. had, I believe, beauty as well as 
 remarkable intellect, and arch, roguish, be- 
 witching ways. And in these respects she 
 was a little like my darling. Didn't you 
 like me to think that ? I couldn't help 
 thinking it. Whenever I read of anyone 
 attractive I say to myself : yes, she reminds 
 me a little of her, as the moon reminds one 
 of the sun. 
 
 Dearest, I have pressed my lips long and 
 passionately to a little place in your letter, 
 pressed them till my head spun round. 
 Would that at this moment I could put my 
 lips as ardently to your lovely hand. Good- 
 night.
 
 226 HIS LETTERS 
 
 Letter Eighty-fifth. 
 
 I really cannot see why I might not have 
 a cup of tea with you to-morrow. I do not 
 think that your explanations explain. You 
 simply don't want me to come ; that is all. 
 I don't believe you ever mean me to come 
 again. This is a thought that suddenly 
 has come to me. If it ripen to a convic- 
 tion I shall go away. I shall go at once, 
 and put three hundred miles between us. 
 Fool that I am, I should come back the 
 next day, to learn whether you had cared 
 much. But seriously, I think that precious 
 opportunities, never perhaps to be regained, 
 are being lost. I call them opportunities ; 
 perhaps you call them pitfalls to be assidu- 
 ously shunned. . . . You were very hand- 
 some to-day. I do not know that I ever 
 saw your eyes and lips more beautiful. 
 And what bewitching little shoes ! They 
 did entire justice to your exquisite foot. 
 I envy the shoe-maker that made them. 
 His must have been a labor of love. I 
 have told you before, have I not, how much 
 I like your hand ? How white and smooth
 
 HIS LETTERS 227 
 
 and strong it is ! And it is with this hand 
 that you write to me ! Think of me at 
 least sometimes, and comfort me by saying 
 that you do. For hours after I get a letter 
 from you, if it is a kind one, I am in bliss. 
 
 When I come in what balm to senses 
 and to heart to find upon my desk one of 
 your dear messages turning up its sweet 
 face to be kissed ; scenting the air with its 
 faint, fine, familiar fragrance. Still carol to 
 me ; my ear thirsts for thy melody. In my 
 heart is your nest builded. 
 
 Would I have you stoop to the make- 
 shifts of other women ? If I said yes, my 
 angel, I should be the basest man on earth. 
 A man permitted by some relenting mood of 
 Heaven to find a blossom of Eden in his 
 path, only to tread it in the mire. Ah ! 
 that, indeed, would be turning from heaven, 
 hellward. I know, then, the love which 
 you awaken in me is the most blessed 
 influence my life has ever known. It would 
 be appalling to think it were otherwise with 
 you. 
 
 Say that, for you also, our intercourse 
 has not been wholly wanting in stimulus, in
 
 228 HIS LETTERS 
 
 sympathy, n awaking to the fullness and 
 beauty and ecstasy of living. 
 
 Letter Eighty-sixth. 
 
 THURSDAY EVENING. 
 
 It is such a joy, such a stimulus to talk 
 to you ; and you are so generous, in all 
 you say of others. This is real majesty. 
 Do you think I do not appreciate it ? 
 I could not now insult you by the shadow 
 of a suspicion. Ah, don't imagine that 
 trust on my part has anything in com- 
 mon with the marital sens,e of security, 
 which in all ages has provoked derision, and 
 which is apt to create carelessness about the 
 treasure it has obtained. I cannot even im- 
 agine remissness in a real lover. He would 
 deserve to lose his idol. I would never lose 
 mine from such a cause as that. 
 
 I should like to kiss your pretty hands 
 this minute, to let my famished eyes rest 
 upon your loveliness. Ah, I wish that I 
 might eat and drink of thee.
 
 ffIS LETTERS 229 
 
 Letter Eighty-seventh. 
 
 I worried afterward over the thought 
 that you might not like my sending you 
 those papers all tumbled and badly out of 
 shape. A man can never feel certain that 
 some rough, careless act of his may not 
 have jarred upon the delicate nerves and 
 senses of a woman. Ah, you send things 
 neatly folded and tied with white silk ! 
 
 How fortunate that you are.a.femme art- 
 iste, as well as a great lady, that in your art 
 you may speak to the world. Why, you 
 can be a blessing to mankind ? 
 
 Perhaps the blessing would have been 
 more unmixed had the genius, in your case, 
 been allied with less beauty. I have not 
 quite made up my mind whether for me in 
 particular it was fortunate. Since I have 
 known you I have had so much torment 
 and so little rapture. Last night I could 
 not help breaking into wild, harsh laughter 
 at your injunction to sleep well. Ah, be- 
 fore I knew you, I could do that, but you, 
 fair lady, have murdered sleep. 
 
 Later When I said I could do better
 
 23 tfIS LETTERS 
 
 than Ruy Bias, I meant, of course, the man 
 described, not Hugo, the describer. There 
 are two weak points in the conception of 
 Ruy Bias, and it is strange that Hugo did 
 not see them. The lack of personal dig- 
 nity, and the exhibition* of physical courage 
 is a little too tardy. As to the dignity, I 
 do not refer to the man's putting on a 
 lackey's coat, and afterward consenting to 
 personate Don Cesar de Bazan. Both acts 
 were dignified, ennobled by their motive. 
 They were done that he might be brought 
 near the woman that he loved. But having 
 become an equerry, he should have stopped 
 there. By becoming prime minister, he 
 would see less of her rather than more. Be- 
 sides, it was known to him, and notorious to 
 everyone, that his sudden rise was due to 
 the queen. He should have accepted from 
 her nothing smaller than herself. Then 
 what began like an idyl would not have 
 been converted into what looked like a prof- 
 itable speculation. As for the marquis, 
 his life should not have been spared until 
 Donna Maria was almost irreparably com- 
 promised. He should have been choked to
 
 HIS LETTERS 231 
 
 death in that earlier scene where he bids 
 Ruy Bias, now prime minister, shut a win- 
 dow. But what, you may ask, would have 
 become of the play ? I don't know and I 
 don't care. The play might have been 
 spoiled, but Ruy Bias would have been 
 nicer. Plays were made for men, not 
 men for plays. And that reminds me as to 
 the " art for art " canon. I tried hard to 
 get at that in an essay upon art, which I 
 wrote at college, when you, sweet one, were 
 still casting furtive glances at your dolls. 
 I remember saying that it was a very 
 good formula for the artist, "art for art"; 
 and that the lawyers had devised a like 
 one, " law for law." But after all, man 
 made art a law for himself. He had not 
 the slightest notion of fashioning idols of 
 wood and stone, and so I suggested that 
 perhaps the largest, safest, and sound- 
 est formula was " art for man." 
 
 I had hoped to get a little line this morn- 
 ing, with an answer to the question that I 
 whispered ; but there is none. You are 
 angry, are you ? Oh, say you are not. You 
 could not be long angry with me, could you ?
 
 232 HIS LETTERS 
 
 Do you remember telling me once you 
 wished me to do something great, some- 
 thing for humanity ? That touched me 
 deeply ; but your hand fell upon an open 
 wound, although it fell like a snowflake. 
 Sometime I will tell you of a hope I once 
 had. But now it is dead. 
 
 Letter Eighty-eighth. 
 
 I am absolutely certain that not a soul 
 looked at the bride to-day. How could 
 they when your loveliness was en vue \ 
 Doesn't everybody notice that you are 
 en beaute 1 ? I want you to tell me what is 
 said to ( you, particularly by the shrewd and 
 observant women. 
 
 Just think of it ; I have not had a line 
 from you, and this is my fourth letter. 
 You don't appreciate me at all. You don't 
 seem to realize that nobody else can get 
 one letter out of me. Well, I am justly 
 punished for my discourtesy to others. 
 Now I know what it means and how it 
 feels to write four letters to another's one. 
 I am becoming compassionate. 
 
 If you had not given me that fragrant
 
 HIS LETTERS 233 
 
 little bit of ribbon, I don't know what I 
 should have done. How lucky it is 
 for me that you are wise as well as 
 beautiful ! 
 
 I have been thinking since I saw you 
 last, of the impression you made upon me 
 when I saw you at your house, in January. 
 Of course you were a splendid, stately 
 creature, in the very prime of your beauty, 
 but you were cold and indifferent. How 
 indeed could you be otherwise ? I said to 
 myself : would she have been different if 
 she had let me see her earlier ? . . . And 
 then I asked myself : I wonder if this gor- 
 geous woman has ever loved, really loved ? 
 She could love ; that is evident in every line 
 of her figure, in her lips and in her eyes ; 
 but has she ? And then I cursed myself, 
 for I felt that I should never please you. 
 I was but too painfully conscious that I did 
 not please you then. Never in my life did 
 I feel such self-contempt and hopelessness 
 as when I came down your stair. But 
 once ensconced safely in my cab, a strange 
 reaction came. All at once the thought 
 swept over me that, after all, I was a man
 
 234 HIS LETTERS 
 
 and you were a woman ; and that to lose 
 the first heat did not necessarily mean the 
 loss of the race. And then my pride and 
 my virility came back to me, and I swore, 
 swore the oath that I would tame that 
 superb creature, and make her care for me. 
 It was as if some spirit had breathed in my 
 ear what Don Salluste whispers to Ruy 
 Bias, at the end of the first act of the 
 drama. 
 
 I measured the difficulties to be sur- 
 mounted ; I saw plainly that your first im- 
 pressions would be against me. But I 
 remembered also what the Duchess of 
 Devonshire said of John Wilkes that the 
 handsomest man in London had but five 
 minutes' start of him. Yes, I had got off 
 very badly ; but in a long race, wind and 
 limb might tell. Ah, this was a feature of 
 the romance that you know not, though I 
 always meant to tell you. 
 
 Letter Eighty-ninth. 
 
 ... I roamed about the sidewalks over- 
 looking D's. for hours, like the peri shut 
 out from the gates of paradise, wishful of
 
 HIS LETTERS 235 
 
 one last glimpse. Do you remember 
 Thackeray's 
 
 Outside the porch sometimes I linger? 
 
 Alas, there was no glimpse for me, and 
 I chided myself for doing what perhaps 
 would have displeased you. Are you dis- 
 pleased ? 
 
 Heavens ! how I want to see you to- 
 morrow, in the white gown and hat ! You 
 will be a tearing belle, but that you always 
 are. I should like to see the expression in 
 your eyes during the marriage service. I 
 wish that at a certain moment my eyes 
 could encounter yours. There would be 
 tears in mine. But there, let me not sigh 
 for the moon. You will, at all events, some 
 time let me see you in your bravery ; yes, I 
 count on that. Dearest, don't flirt ! But 
 if you really cannot help it, entouree as you 
 will be, be general, I beg of you, in your 
 distribution of sweet looks and fetching 
 ways. I know you will dance, and I hate 
 the men who will be privileged to touch 
 your hand. What right have they to touch 
 it? It is not theirs, it is not theirs.
 
 236 HIS LETTERS 
 
 
 
 Letter Ninetieth. 
 
 ... It is incredible how much I care 
 for your respect. Would to God that I 
 were more worthy of your ennobling influ- 
 ence. Yes, dearest, it is not your fault 
 you cannot do for me what the goddesses 
 did for their mortal lovers make me a 
 demigod. 
 
 I glanced, on Sunday, at what S. 
 writes about naturalism in art. His 
 notions seem correct enough, but they 
 flash in the pan. Nobody will read him. 
 He is dull ; he infects nobody. He does 
 not evince the gift of startling the mind, 
 firing curiosity and riveting attention. Oh, 
 to-day, besides the lost letter, there was 
 another lovely missive from thee. You 
 know how to bless as well as rule ; it is the 
 prerogative of goddesses. How ashamed I 
 felt at my vexation of last Friday, when I 
 imagined myself to be ill-used. Yes, you 
 say truly that there was a time when I 
 would gladly have written ten letters for 
 a word from you ; whereas now I hold 
 myself cheated if I don't get one for one.
 
 HIS LETTERS 237 
 
 
 
 Does that prove that I love you less or 
 more ? I think the difference is simply 
 an indelible mark of a difference in the 
 stage of love. It is certain that for a 
 single indulgent glance, Ruy Bias would 
 twenty times have scaled the spike-topped 
 fence of the queen's garden, to lay upon 
 the bench a flower that recalled to her the 
 fields of Neuberg. It is no less certain 
 that when his idol had confessed she cared 
 for him, he wanted far more, and claimed 
 it. Do you not suppose that she expected 
 it, and would have been surprised had he 
 been less exacting and less clamorous ? I 
 know not. Do you you resolve this prob- 
 lem in the deep lore of love ? I am sure 
 that it must have been many times debated 
 in the Parlements d' Amour at Aix and at 
 Toulouse. Ah, dearest, you seem to repro- 
 duce those ardent and voluptuous days. I 
 write in prose, but the thought of your sur- 
 passing loveliness of which I dream, of all 
 the beauty which exists from your love-lit 
 eyes to your rosy heel, ought to lend to 
 prose the music and the flame of song. 
 Ah, sweet one, do I "suit" you? It is
 
 238 HIS LETTERS 
 
 ecstasy to hear you say it. I love, I wor- 
 ship thee, with every upward soaring of my 
 soul ! 
 
 Letter Ninety-first. 
 
 SUNDAY MORNING. 
 
 Even you cannot imagine what a joy it is 
 to me to know that you like the subject for 
 a picture on which you are now engaged. 
 If that alone should fail, it would be due to 
 the refractory material, and I should only 
 adore you more for thinking better of it 
 than it deserves. What you are really 
 doing is to tell over again the story of Endy- 
 mion in modern guise. Aye, I was well 
 inspired when I divined you to be Artemis. 
 Her history is indeed thine. In that love- 
 liest of Greek myths, however, there is one 
 thing that is hard to understand : That the 
 goddess, when she stooped to look kindly 
 on a mortal, would be irresistible is plain 
 enough ; but what drew her to Endymion ? 
 He was only a shepherd on Mount Latmos. 
 Was it because, with her celestial intuition, 
 she saw that he alone of mortals had divined 
 her ? It would seem that even a goddess
 
 HIS LETTERS 239 
 
 may well wish to be understood. To the 
 dwellers on the cold heights of Olympus 
 the bliss of sympathy had been denied. 
 That is why so many of them were tempted 
 to prefer the warmer earth to heaven. . . 
 
 How little confidence have observing men 
 in the perfect refinement of women, even 
 when they have had consummate advantages 
 of birth and breeding ; and how much less 
 when their position may be largely due to 
 accident ! This even from the physical view- 
 point ; and how much less likely is a lover 
 to discover in his beloved a flawless refine- 
 ment of the intellect, the heart, the soul. 
 Nay, there is but one such living, and he 
 that pens this word is her adorer. Alas ! a 
 hopeless adorer, neglecting his sheep upon 
 the slopes of Latmos, and straining his eyes 
 skyward for the advent of Luna and her 
 silver bow. Will he never then be allowed 
 to hope ? Perhaps, some evening, when 
 the earth is bathed in silver radiance, and 
 the air is cool with the first breath of autumn, 
 and he, poor watcher, has dropped asleep, 
 worn out with invoking the vision that 
 comes never, he may feel a soft, warm touch
 
 240 ffIS LETTERS 
 
 upon his hand, and awake to find himself in 
 paradise. Surely such a hope need not be 
 all a dream. When I think of all that has 
 happened since, a year ago, a lovely lady 
 traced upon a card some words that you 
 remember ; when I think of this, my faith 
 in the future is quite boundless. 
 
 Do not chill it. Let me keep it to live 
 upon while you are gone. 
 
 YOUR SLAVE. 
 
 Letter Ninety-second. 
 
 I live in dread of some portentous inci- 
 dent, some sinister reaction in your mind, 
 that shall have the most direct and dread- 
 ful bearing on my own fate. Oh, shall you 
 do this thing, shall you cast me off ? Can 
 you not bear with me one hour ? Shall you 
 deny me a moment's happy dreaming be- 
 tween a sleep and a sleep ? It may be that 
 this presentiment is groundless, but it haunts 
 me. Did you ever see a man weep ? It is 
 a repulsive sight. I am glad you did not 
 see me, last night, as I remembered what 
 you had just told me, that you were not so 
 far from me but that I might have seen you
 
 HIS LETTERS 241 
 
 that detestable summer. O God ! can a 
 man be so blind as that ? The thought of 
 it makes one curse his Maker. But then 
 ... I have seen you at last. 
 
 We needs must love the highest when we 
 see it. Thou art the highest and most 
 human too. 
 
 Letter Ninety -third. 
 
 I wonder how much you care for me. 
 All day and all night I ask myself that 
 question, for my dreams even are preoc- 
 cupied. I always fall back on the con- 
 clusion that your feeling, whatever it be, is 
 not a hundreth part so deep and intense 
 as mine. It cannot be; it is impossible! 
 There are reasons why it cannot. But I 
 would rather have it, pale as it sometimes 
 seems to me, than all the ardor of the love- 
 liest woman I ever saw before or heard of. 
 So I am happy after a fashion, happier, far 
 happier than I ever was before. 
 
 But what do you mean about that man 
 T. ? Of course I know him very well, and 
 he has cause to be glad I do. But if you 
 believe that I could allow any man living to
 
 24* tffS LETTERS 
 
 speak your name to me, I could not see you 
 again ; for such distrust I could not bear. 
 You must expect to hear things. Everyone 
 does. The only question of importance is 
 what you believe. 
 
 Now I have written six letters to two from 
 you, but one of yours is worth a dozen of 
 mine. I used not to count in that way. I 
 used to think that a word from me was 
 worth a hundred from another I mean 
 men I never wrote to a person of your 
 sex. But now it is quite different. I am 
 thankful for what I can get. And what a 
 letter I did get this morning ! Oh, my be- 
 loved, I can never burn it ! Ah, let me 
 keep this one ; it will tear me to burn it ! 
 
 Only this morning, as I was reading at 
 an open window, a poor creature, trying 
 to earn bread honestly, came and shouted 
 something about "knives to mend." I was 
 chasing a reluctant thought, and in my irri- 
 tation bade him crossly to go away. And 
 then in an instant the thought? came to me, 
 " Oh, if she had heard me, her lovely, tender 
 lips might quiver ! " and the tears came to 
 my eyes, and I went to the window, and
 
 &IS LETTERS 243 
 
 called the man back, and gave him some- 
 thing. It is always thus now. You see you 
 are making me quite too good for this 
 earth ! Everybody can get anything from 
 me they wish now, and I shall soon be a 
 pauper. 
 
 About Cleopatra ; I should want the 
 strongest evidence to convince me that the 
 coin you saw bore the face of the Cleo- 
 patra our Cleopatra she that in her girl- 
 hood detained the great Julius a year in 
 Alexandria, at the very crisis of his fate, and 
 afterward made the world seem well lost to 
 Antony. G.'s scholarship was picked up 
 piecemeal, late in life, and had large gaps in 
 it. As a matter of fact, Cleopatra was a 
 common name in the Ptolemaic family. 
 Half a dozen princesses of that name had 
 coins struck in their honor. That mummy, 
 by the way, which was found, and from 
 which such injurious deductions were drawn, 
 was not her mummy, but another Cleo- 
 patra's. We know from contemporary evi- 
 dence a lot about the famous beauty. She 
 did not have a big nose or thick lips, but 
 was of the purest Greek type.
 
 244 ffIS LETTERS 
 
 Do I like long-nosed women ? Of course 
 not. Such a feature may go well enough 
 with beauty of a forbidding type, but what 
 artist or what lover would ascribe it to the 
 goddess of desire ? 
 
 As to the Jewish type, it suited Jael or 
 Judith, but the fate of Holofernes would 
 never have befallen me, for I would never 
 have gone to sleep in the tent of that hand- 
 some but sinister daughter of Israel. 
 
 Do you want to know what kind of nose 
 I like best and dream of ? Run straight to 
 your mirror ; there it is ! 
 
 Letter Ninety-fourth. 
 
 MY SWEET DARLING: 
 
 I like parts of your second letter, but I 
 loved the whole of the first, which was 
 a beautiful and noble and delicious letter. 
 It struck me in a hundred places at once. 
 Ah, it is wonderful how every part of my 
 nature answers to your touch, and that one 
 who can rouse such passionate madness 
 can, also, in a thousand ways, invigorate and 
 elevate. Oh, this is love indeed, this aston- 
 ishing emotion that masters the whole being
 
 HIS LETTERS ^45 
 
 and makes you in one and the same instant 
 want the beloved one and worship her ! 
 Incredible combination of desire and of 
 reverence ! One tear of yours kills me with 
 sadness. One touch of your hand thrills 
 me with an ecstasy that makes me yearn 
 to live forever. Yet I sometimes think 
 that with such power as you possess over 
 me, you should be more merciful. Why 
 do you taunt me with what you have taught 
 me to repent of? Why are you harsher 
 than God ? By Heaven, I am sorry from 
 my soul that I ever looked at a human 
 being before I saw you. I don't mean to 
 call myself a saint, though you know how 
 St. Augustine and St. Ignatius Loyola lived 
 in their youth. Yet I do mean that since I 
 have loved you I am just that. If to you 
 alone I seem not always saintlike, it is be- 
 cause a Platonic attachment between a man 
 and a woman seems to me impossible. But 
 do you imagine I fancied my princess to be 
 like the women whom the decayed Parisian 
 cads imagine to be ladies ? Do you imagine 
 me to be like the men whom the same 
 writers depict as gentlemen ? They are very
 
 246 HIS LETTERS 
 
 clever, these writers. No one appreciates 
 their cleverness more than I ; but it takes 
 more than cleverness to be or to understand 
 a gentleman. Ah, well, darling 1 , never tor- 
 ture me again ! Compared with St. Augus- 
 tine's my life has been as white as snow ; 
 and since I have known you there is no 
 better man alive than I. No, I could not 
 understand Browning's remembering that 
 early love so long. He could not have 
 loved Miss Barrett so much as he thought, 
 and remembered that. To me the whole 
 past is a blank ; I seem only to have lived 
 since I loved you, my love, my precious 
 one, my treasure ! 
 
 I am going down to the sea ; I want to 
 sit where I can see the ocean and hear some 
 music, and think of my beloved. It would 
 
 kill me to lose you now ! Good-by. 
 
 
 Letter Ninety-fifth. 
 
 I came down here last night, at nine 
 o'clock, so that I might meet no one. I 
 have had my breakfast and dinner sent up 
 to my room, and here I have sat, sometimes 
 hearing some music, and always looking out
 
 HIS LETTERS 247 
 
 upon the water, thinking, thinking of whom 
 do you suppose ? After I leave you I must 
 steep myself in nature. I think I told you 
 that after leaving you the other day, I had 
 myself taken up the river. Well, in passing 
 through the park, a man whom I knew 
 stopped me and asked me where I was go- 
 ing. I was sunk in a deep reverie, I had no 
 wits about me, and I stammered that I was 
 going to dine at the riverside. He at once 
 proposed to go with me, and so out of my 
 mind was I whose fault was it, dear ? that 
 I could make no objection. How I hated 
 that man, loathed the drive and dinner that 
 followed ! At long intervals he would say, 
 " You haven't spoken a word in ten minutes, 
 I am afraid I bore you." Then, after 
 another pause, " Really I begin to think 
 that my room would be better than my 
 company ! " And I wanted to be alone, as 
 I am here, to-night ; for I would rather 
 crush my lips against your lovely foot-prints 
 in the sand, than be myself the idol of any 
 other woman on the earth.
 
 248 HIS LETTERS 
 
 Letter Ninety-sixth. 
 
 I got your telegram ; it went straight to 
 my heart. Ah, I begin to think that you 
 believe I love you as you ought to be 
 loved ! 
 
 Yes, I was sad when I first saw you ; my 
 heart was very heavy. I doubted I 
 doubted you see, my darling now I am 
 going to tell you you are so much younger 
 than I how I curse fate that I did not see 
 you earlier! I will never speak of this 
 again ; I could not. I think that you do 
 care for me a little ; how much, how much I 
 know not. But I know that your presence 
 is like the sunshine, and that hope and joy 
 bloom in it. Only with you do I feel I 
 don't mean with you, but away from you 
 that dreadful sinking of the heart. I know 
 not how it is, but I seem able to make other 
 women as young as you, beloved, forget 
 that I am older than they. But with you I 
 have dark misgivings. 
 
 There, I have unbosomed my heart. 
 Don't ever speak of this ; I could not bear 
 it. For, alas ! a man cannot add a cubit to
 
 HIS LETTERS 249 
 
 his stature, nor subtract a decade from his 
 age. You are in the most splendid bloom 
 of youth. I almost wish that you were not. 
 And yet it would be wicked to wish to mar 
 such a perfect masterpiece of nature and of 
 training. I almost wish I had not said this. 
 Don't ever remind me of it. Never would 
 I forgive you. I am too proud, I think, for 
 my own good. I cannot write any more 
 now ; I feel depressed. I sometimes wish 
 that I were dead. But while I live my 
 whole heart is yours, if you care for it. 
 Adieu ! 
 
 Letter Ninety-seventh. 
 
 I said that I looked back on Q. as on the 
 loveliest corner of the earth. There are 
 other places de par le monde where every- 
 thing bears the cachet of exquisite taste ; 
 but what other place is pervaded with the 
 subtle fascinations of such a peerless, re- 
 sistless personality ? It is because all 
 is radiant and redolent of its sweet 
 mistress, that every man sensitively organ- 
 ized must inhale its atmosphere with the 
 keenest delight.
 
 250 HIS LETTERS 
 
 Ah, when shall I forget our walk upon 
 the shore, and the prints of your slender 
 feet upon the white sand ? I stooped arid 
 kissed them ; and the stroll through the 
 sighing woods, and the drives through the 
 lonely lanes what memories ! Do you 
 know, I have always had my share of pride 
 without any solid reason but of late I 
 have had a tremendous accession of that 
 feeling since I have heard that a brilliant 
 and lovely lady considered me a clever 
 man, and had even let it be understood 
 that she thought me rather nice than other- 
 wise. Ah, that, if I were an emperor, 
 would make me feel myself more imperial. 
 
 What a charming nook that was in your 
 drawing room, where we sat, one evening, 
 among the cool shadows ! Ah, would that 
 I might be privileged to make my vows 
 there, though their temperature would ill 
 befit the place ! 
 
 What a little world this is, as we were 
 saying ! I found in my letter-box a letter 
 from W. It seems that there is there 
 a nest of your enemies; the only enemies 
 that so sweet a woman could have those
 
 HIS LETTERS 251 
 
 engendered by sheer envy. Mrs. man- 
 ages to secrete more than her fair share 
 of venom. She has tried to do you harm. 
 
 Ah, when shall I see thee, lovely one, 
 again ? the sweetest, most generous, most 
 forgiving, elevating, and inspiring creature 
 that is drawing vital air. 
 
 Ah, I pine for the sight of her handwrit- 
 ing, since I cannot see the face that is so 
 dear to me. 
 
 Au revoir, ma bien aime'e ! 
 
 Letter Ninety-eighth. 
 
 You say that you believe women to be 
 more charming now than they ever were. 
 That may be, but the stage setting is not so 
 rare. A really great lady like yourself, for 
 instance, would have had a much nicer time 
 in Rome, about the year 50 of our era. 
 What luxury, what magnificence, what ex- 
 quisite refinement, what artistic embellish- 
 ment and intensifying of life ! Ah, yes ; you 
 should have lived when with your walk, or 
 with your faint, mysterious smile, you would 
 have made those superb Roman women de- 
 sire to poison you, and thus remove you
 
 252 HIS LETTERS 
 
 from their path. By the way, you know 
 that lovely bust that the ignorant call a 
 bust of Clytie, and imagine to be an ideal 
 head and bosom ? Well, there is scarcely 
 any doubt that it is a portrait bust the 
 portrait of Poppsea Sabina, as she looked 
 when Nero took her away from Otho. 
 There is about her lips and chin the same 
 extraordinary and haunting combination of 
 unslaked curiosity and passion which is 
 so strongly suggested upon your lips. I 
 wonder if you can detest traveling by rail 
 as much as I do. To me it seems the quin- 
 tessence of our nineteenth century vul- 
 garity, our sham civilization. Oh, what 
 a funny thing our vaunted progress must 
 seem to an on-looker from an elder planet, 
 Mars, for instance ! We have harnessed 
 the lightning mainly for the purpose of en- 
 abling a stock gambler to signal his con- 
 federate ; and we have coerced the genii of 
 steam to permit a commercial traveler, with 
 his little box of samples, to go from New 
 York to San Francisco in five days. It 
 took five weeks for a trireme to carry a play 
 of Euripides, or a dialogue of Plato, from
 
 HIS LETTERS 253 
 
 Athens to Syracuse ; but when it got there 
 it stayed. Oh, yes, it stayed, and has out- 
 lasted the Roman roads that seemed im- 
 perishable ; and it will outlive our railways 
 of which we are so proud. 
 
 Ah, go on ! Have courage, do better, bet- 
 ter, nobler and nobler work ; work that men 
 and women will never allow to die. You 
 can do it, you will do it, you shall do it a 
 trophy worthy of the lovely hand that reared 
 it! 
 
 Letter Ninety-ninth. 
 
 Heavens, how I love you ! Do you real- 
 ize what it means to absorb a man's heart as 
 you have mine ? And now you have written 
 me a second letter, when you could not 
 have yet received my first. How am I to 
 repay this ? I will consecrate to you whole 
 years of worship years unexpected that I 
 will wrest from death. 
 
 Of course common people sneer at Z., and 
 particularly at an act which their spiritual 
 atrophy and cowardice could not imitate. 
 But you and I can pity and understand him. 
 
 I have sent you to-day the biography
 
 254 HIS LETTERS 
 
 which you asked for. It is indispensable, if 
 we agree with Sainte-Beuve, that we must 
 be acquainted with an author's life if we 
 wish to understand his books. The purport 
 of Ibsen's biography may be summed up in 
 a sentence: so far as the "dramas of the 
 day " are concerned, Ibsen has presented 
 on the stage, and under the conditions of 
 dramatic art, very much the same view of 
 foreign society, and the principles which 
 actuate it, which Tolstoi didactically sets 
 forth in " My Religion." Voilh, tout. 
 
 Ah, dearest, the miniature ! the minia- 
 ture ! thank God that you remembered it ; 
 it will make all the difference in the world to 
 me. How could a photograph render you 
 who should be painted ? Don't you see 
 that I love you, love you as only men love 
 once in a hundred years, and that I must 
 have something which has life and color to 
 gaze upon in the long vigils of the night. 
 Ah, yes ; and you say, my beloved, you are 
 going to bless me with the gift. 
 
 Letter One Hundredth. 
 Thank God that you did not send me
 
 ffIS LETTERS 255 
 
 that first long letter of which you speak. I 
 know that it would have killed me. Ah, 
 yes ; that is no conventional phrase ; it 
 would be easy for you to kill me. All you 
 would have to do would be to be silent ; 
 that would take away the wish to live, and 
 when that is gone some live not long. But 
 you will not do what would be so easy; will 
 you, dear ? You will spare me yet a little 
 while. Say you will, say that you will 
 write, so that I may find a word from you 
 when I return from this long unhappy 
 journey. What is there that you wish 
 which I would not do ? Why, I would not 
 even ask to see you if you should say that 
 you did not wish it ; but for God's sake, for 
 my sake, if you even care for me a little, 
 don't say that, anything but that ! You will 
 not, will you ? Say you will not, queen of 
 my soul. Oh, let me thank you again for 
 not sending me the first long letter. I can 
 guess what it contained, because my soul is 
 not utterly unworthy of your own. I can 
 guess, but you could never guess, what the 
 effect of such a latter would have been on 
 me. I could not have borne it. I should
 
 256 ms LETTERS 
 
 have loved* you to distraction all the same, 
 but I should have hated and loathed myself, 
 and under such conditions I could not exist. 
 But you were merciful -yes, you are merci- 
 ful. From the first I knew you to be the 
 sweetest woman in the world. You are not 
 a tigress, you are an angel ; the only angel 
 that ever gave wings to me. I am always 
 on my knees to you. You know it, and the 
 angel held you from dealing me a deadly 
 blow. Don't ever want to kill me again. 
 If you do, I shall know it in some strange, 
 subtle way, and you will not need to speak. 
 
 Letter One Hundred and First. 
 
 I have this moment returned, having 
 again traveled all night, in order to be at 
 least near you a few hours earlier. You 
 need not change the address of those dar- 
 ling letters until next Monday. Oh, dear- 
 est, I am almost dead with yearning. 
 There has not been a second of my waking 
 hours in which I have not thought of you, 
 and of sleep I have had indeed but little. 
 The visions that rise before me when the 
 lights have been put out are not by any
 
 HIS LETTERS 257 
 
 means conducive to slumber. Strange to 
 say, most of these scenes seem to be en- 
 acted upon an island some enchanted 
 island of the ./Egean, like that to which the 
 prudent Thetis bore Achilles dressed in 
 girl's clothes a visitant whose perform- 
 ances are said to have been regarded as 
 scandalous and shocking by the feminine 
 on-lookers of a certain age ; though it is 
 not recorded that the handsome married 
 women joined in the outcry. 
 
 Alas, my head is full of islands and their 
 intoxicating incidents ! 
 
 You, on the other hand, my princess, 
 never deign to give me a single thought. 
 
 Well, yes, perhaps one thought on Friday ; 
 for the letter which you received that morn- 
 ing would have warmed a stone. But why 
 should you trouble yourself to think much 
 more of one you have so utterly subdued ? 
 What is the use of revanquishing the van- 
 quished ? You have stamped with your 
 little foot on my neck, the physical, tangi- 
 ble, decisive proof of mastery that not one 
 woman in five hundred million gets. Yes, 
 and you get it for nothing. Well no, not
 
 258 HIS LETTERS 
 
 quite that, but only for the small change of 
 love. 
 
 If you don't tell me, immediately after re- 
 ceiving this, that I may see you this after- 
 noon or evening, I will do something 
 desperate. I will go back from whence I 
 came ; I could not do anything more des- 
 perate than that. 
 
 If you had for me a hundredth part of the 
 mad desire and longing that I have for you, 
 you would have flown to me, and we would 
 have met somewhere in mid-air. I simply 
 shall not begin to breathe till I see your 
 handwriting, and know that I am to look 
 upon your face to-day. 
 
 Letter One Hundred and Second. 
 
 I revere, I worship you. I have never 
 loved you as I do to-night. If anyone had 
 told me this morning that within twelve hours 
 I should adore you ten times more than 
 I did then, I should have laughed at him, 
 for it would have seemed impossible. Yet 
 it is true. The oftener I see you the more 
 ineffable becomes the tenderness with which 
 I think of you, and the more fierce and
 
 HIS LETTERS 259 
 
 quenchless is my thirst for you. Nor is it 
 for one second to earth that my passion for 
 you draws me ; it is upward. In my dreams 
 it is to the heights you beckon me, and it is 
 there that you fall into my arms. Do you 
 know, beloved, that at certain moments to- 
 day, your face was illuminated like that of 
 no mortal. You cannot be an earthly 
 woman. Heavens, what a sight entrancing 
 your sweet face, when love shines through 
 it ! The very greatest of the singers, Dante, 
 has imagined it, but never saw it, never saw 
 what I have seen at last. Ah, you are the 
 ideal sweetheart. You satisfy every thought, 
 taste, impulse, inspiration. You act upon 
 your lover like some strange chemic heat 
 that brings out all his capacities. Oh, you 
 are indeed a splendid creature, as well as 
 the most delicious little piece of femininity. 
 How sweetly womanly you are ! You can- 
 not guess how soft your eyes are sometimes ; 
 they melt, yes they would melt a stone, and 
 God knows I am no stone to you ! And 
 your shyness is so fascinating !
 
 Letter One Hundred and Third. 
 
 On my way I seized your delicious letter, 
 and have been devouring it ever since. Ah, 
 if you loved me I could defy fortune, des- 
 tiny, God himself to harm me. Does that 
 seem blasphemous? Oh, no; it is the rec- 
 ognition of his best gift to man. 
 
 I have had some annoyances. There is 
 a state of increasing moral tension about 
 me ; my enemies have been at work, but 
 the sight of your dear handwriting whirled 
 all out of consciousness forever. If your 
 hand can do that, what cannot your face do ? 
 
 I foresaw that you would not let me see 
 you Friday in your boudoir. Ah, yes, I 
 am beginning to understand you a little, 
 only a little. I never could fathom you 
 utterly, but I am beginning to learn some 
 of your pretty ways ah, they are pretty ! 
 
 I am fidelity itself and passion inexhaust- 
 ible, although at first so prejudiced you 
 were it is hard for you to believe it. But 
 you will see. Give me a chance to show it. 
 My God, how could a man that you have 
 been kind to look at any other woman ?
 
 His LETTERS 261 
 
 I have thought much of our last conver- 
 sation. With what touching sincerity and 
 infectious poignancy you speak of grief ! 
 Ah, dearest, in your words it is not talent, 
 it is genius that I find ! How otherwise 
 could you so affect me ? 
 
 How I detest those people, the type of 
 whom you speak ! I was brought up among 
 them. Luckily I reacted violently. It was 
 as if hens had hatched a hawk. 
 
 I agreed with what you said about Amer- 
 ican reserve. There is no such thing as 
 deep emotion which does not find an outlet. 
 One might as well talk of lava being hot 
 and plentiful when it doesn't erupt. Yet it 
 is strange enough that I have always been 
 very reserved before. It is only to you 
 that I speak out of my heart. 
 
 Letter One Hundred and Fourth. 
 
 When, in your angry moments, you de- 
 clare that I don't suit you in anything, I re- 
 fuse to believe you. What a state of things ! 
 What are you going to do with a man who, 
 however you revile him, persists in thinking 
 you the sweetest woman in the world, dear
 
 262 HIS LETTERS 
 
 Helo ? You will have to try some act of 
 violence, such as whipping me with your 
 slipper, or strangling me with your silk 
 stocking, or trampling on me with your 
 slender foot ; which shall it be ? I should 
 revel in any of those penalties ! 
 
 I was delighted to-day to see and know 
 how thoroughly your pictures have been ap- 
 preciated abroad ; above all that they have 
 been spoken of in such high praise by one who 
 is an acknowledged master. Such unprece- 
 dented testimony to the merit of your work 
 ought to let in a ray of light upon the dark- 
 ened intellects that cannot recognize supe- 
 rior talent. 
 
 They are touching lines you gave me, 
 "Thou or I." They were evidently written 
 by a woman, and she is quite right in finally 
 acknowledging that the man died first. It 
 is a very curious fact have you not noticed 
 it ? that while of little passions the woman 
 is generally the first if not the only victim, 
 in great passions it is the man that suffers. 
 We know that Beatrice did not value Dante's 
 devotion at the price of a glove, and that 
 Laura never gave a thought to Petrarch.
 
 HIS LETTERS 263 
 
 It is true, on the other hand, that Vanessa 
 died for Swift one of the most amazing tri- 
 umphs of intellect over physical unattractive- 
 ness that ever I heard of. What is really 
 beautiful in the lines you saved for me is 
 the fact that the survivor who writes them, 
 and the reader also, is long uncertain which 
 of the two lovers is the dead one. 
 
 You say in your sweetness that I am not 
 one of the vanquished in life's battle. 
 Everything is relative. Defeat or triumph 
 depends upon the aims one started with. 
 But oh, I have known you ! I have not been 
 vanquished, then ; that was an all-sufficing 
 victory. 
 
 Letter One Hundred and Fifth. 
 
 I have had to spend many days and hours 
 lately among the frightful cads who haunt 
 this place, because I was nearer you and 
 could more readily obtain your letters. 
 Such considerations have no weight with 
 me. I would bear much worse humiliation 
 for the sake of a line from you. Yes, I 
 could bear anything if I was not right in 
 divining that you have had another violent
 
 204 HIS LETTERS 
 
 reaction against me. Well, whose fault is 
 it? Certainly not yours. A wise man does 
 not blame a woman for such impulsive move- 
 ments. He puts the blame where it be- 
 longs upon himself. It is his part to put 
 an end to such instinctive variations and 
 recoils. It is easier to see how to do it 
 when I remember how different you were 
 before you got back from M. before you 
 saw me and heard me talk. One must be 
 blind not to perceive the remedy. I desire 
 to be put on probation for six weeks. Dur- 
 ing that time I do not wish you to consent 
 to see me. If in that time I cannot con- 
 vince you that I love you as you wish to be 
 loved, I will submit without a murmur to 
 a final decree of banishment ; but I want a 
 reprieve and further trial. I believe that I 
 can make you forget the things that make 
 you hate me. You never owned that you 
 hated me before you came back from M. 
 Why is it now impossible to regain the 
 trust and the affection that for a little while 
 I dreamed were mine ? There are still 
 some arrows in my quiver. Who knows ? 
 perhaps I might make you like me better
 
 HIS LETTERS 265 
 
 than you did in that first April week. At 
 all events let me try. I have swallowed all 
 the insults that I can digest at present, suf- 
 fered all the misery that for the moment I 
 can bear, and I can speak of all this more 
 reasonably and cogently than I can write. 
 You will let me speak to-morrow ; but we 
 will not walk unless you command it. For 
 such an interview as I wish, and which 
 means everything to me, you surely could 
 let me come to your house. But whatever 
 your orders, of course I shall obey them, and 
 nothing that you could say or do could pre- 
 vent me from being, 
 
 Yours forever, 
 
 HUBERT. 
 
 Letter One Hundred and Sixth. 
 
 I read the extract from the letter which 
 you sent me with the strangest sensations 
 of mingled amusement and delight. But 
 you cannot terrify me by showing me how 
 redoubtable you are to others. Of course 
 you are, but the old soothsayer in France 
 was right ; you are too intensely femme not 
 to be the slave of the man, the lucky one
 
 266 HIS LETTERS 
 
 whom you should really care for. Ah, 
 surely, he would be born under a bright 
 star, and you would not be in the least 
 afraid of his mastery ; one never is when 
 one really loves. That is the final cul- 
 minating test. Of course you would rebel, 
 because it naturally takes time for an em- 
 press to realize that she has given herself a 
 master at last ; yet really, upon the whole, 
 she does' not suffer much. There are worse 
 things in this vale of tears than to be the 
 slave of one who loves you to distraction ; 
 and who cannot define the difference be- 
 tween slavery and tyranny. . . . 
 
 I told you the deepest wish of my heart 
 when I said that I wanted to carry you to 
 Constantinople. How have I smiled when 
 you have told me that I knew not jealousy ! 
 If I do not dwell upon your past it is because 
 I am quite sufficiently preoccupied by the 
 present and the future. Dearest, never 
 make me jealous ! You do not know me if 
 you imagine that it will be safely done ; I 
 don't mean safely to you but safely to me. 
 I am not vain ; it is only vanity that enables 
 men to bear the pangs of real jealousy.
 
 HIS LETTERS 267 
 
 You will toss these warnings aside, I dare 
 say, but if you do, and truly care for me a 
 little, as I must now believe, you may find 
 out some day too late that I was very 
 earnest. Oh, you will never understand how 
 I am racked by that feeling ; but now it is 
 enough joy to me to hear you speak and 
 touch your ardent hand. Forgive me if I 
 have sometimes blasphemed by pretending 
 otherwise in the wild and fruitless effort to 
 gain more ! 
 
 Au revoir, & bientdt, my morning star! 
 
 Letter One Hundred and Seventh. 
 
 I kissed your letter for the exquisite hand 
 that penned it. You bid me tell you more 
 about my life ; it is too humdrum, too 
 packed with drudgery to interest such an 
 one as you. There is not an act, a word, a 
 thought which I would not gladly have you 
 know. 
 
 Often have I wished that I could give 
 you the ring which made the bearer invis- 
 ible. When I read your letter I felt wicked, 
 almost sacrilegious that I dared to feel any- 
 thing but reverence for thee. Ah, forgive
 
 268 HIS LETTERS 
 
 me that I love you with such a passionate 
 human ardor ; I cannot help it. It is too 
 late, I fear, for me to change the nature of 
 my passion. Although you have every- 
 thing in you with which to elevate a lover, 
 you have also, dearest, everything with 
 which to bewitch him. For if you are the 
 noblest, the fairest, the most radiantly 
 gifted of women, you are also the most 
 physically lovely. 
 
 Ah, in pity, dearest, love me ! 
 
 Letter One Hundred and Eighth. 
 
 Ah, yes, dear ; in spite of your tender and 
 inspiring words, my life was manque'e. I 
 did not care for pecuniary success. It 
 seemed to me that I had sold my birthright 
 for a mess of pottage. I felt, as I told you 
 that first time, like a gladiator, like a man 
 born free, but made captive, and forced to 
 use his sinews and his thews for hire. I 
 hated life ; I wanted to die. I saw no 
 possibility of change to another profession ; 
 and all I looked forward to was accumulat- 
 ing as quickly as possible a provision for 
 those who are dependent upon me, and
 
 HIS LETTERS 269 
 
 then quieting my heart-burnings in the 
 most effectual way. 
 
 And then I saw your painting, and in it 
 I saw you, and for the first time realized all 
 that love might mean. That oath, ah, it 
 was an oath, dearest, which it would have 
 been the most shocking blasphemy to take 
 about any other woman but you. I had 
 used it once about myself, when I swore to 
 outgrow selfishness, and to recognize the 
 responsibility which I too lightly had as- 
 sumed. It was by my mother's memory 
 that I swore to touch your heart ; and it is 
 not alone your beauty which I yearn for, it 
 is the sweet and noble and lofty soul, the 
 genius that radiates through your looks 
 and your words. I wanted to marry your 
 mind. I cannot tell you with what inde- 
 scribable emotions of delight I have seen 
 your last picture. Remember, it is the first 
 thing of yours that has been exhibited 
 since you began to care for me a little. I 
 cannot describe to you the elation with 
 which I fancied that I could descry some 
 traces of an approaching marriage of our 
 souls,
 
 270 HIS LETTERS 
 
 Good-night, my angel. 
 
 I must have your heart, it must be mine, 
 queen of my soul ! 
 
 When shall I look again into those love- 
 haunted eyes ? 
 
 Letter One Hundred and Ninth. 
 
 I cannot forget the color of your cheeks 
 the last time that I saw you. Why, they 
 were beautiful disks of flame, such disks as 
 Venus wore when she sprang out of the sea 
 at Paphos, to set the world ablaze. 
 
 How many things you have taught me ! 
 above all a hundred passionate and tender 
 yearnings of which I had never dreamed. 
 You ought to love me if love ever is re- 
 sponsive to ardor in the worshiper. 
 
 Do you know that when I think of and 
 sometimes speak to you, I cannot help us- 
 ing diminutives, dignified and stately as you 
 are at will. I use them, I think, in obe- 
 dience to a deep instinct twined around the 
 roots of a virile heart, yes, an instinct hun- 
 dreds of thousands of years old. For even 
 in the cave dwellings you find the bones of 
 the men close to the portal, while the re-
 
 tfIS LETTERS 271 
 
 mains of the women and children lie far 
 within. It is clear that all the tenants of 
 such caves succumbed to some overwhelm- 
 ing assault ; but the men, at least, fell in 
 the right place. No, it is impossible for 
 the man really in love not to feel a protect- 
 ing impulse. 
 
 V raiment, vous saves il est ddfendu d'etre 
 enchantcresse a un tel point. 
 
 How do you manage to live and be so 
 sweet ? I marvel that other women have 
 not long since poisoned you. 
 
 Do you remember that tryst upon the 
 beautiful bridge ? Ah, there is not a mo- 
 ment of the day, or of my waking hours at 
 night, when I do not remember that ! 
 
 Letter One Hundred and Tenth. 
 
 I send back the book that you lent me. 
 Of course I liked it, loved it. How can I 
 help liking anything that you like? Never 
 was^ there such perfect sympathy. I under- 
 stand you ; I know what you think and 
 wish. Oh, dearest, what bliss you give me 
 when you tell me that I have made you 
 happy. I want to, and I rack my own
 
 s; 2 ttis LETTERS 
 
 heart when I am unkind to you. ... I live 
 and feel only in you. I haven't a trace of 
 egotism left, unless it be the vanity sud- 
 denly awakened in me by the belief that 
 you care for me a little. Will you forgive 
 that sort of egotism ? How good it was of 
 you to write that letter ; you knew I should 
 be pining. Yes, I pine. 
 
 I am intensely jealous of everyone that 
 saw those little gold-embroidered shoes ; 
 and I dislike and distrust the keen-sighted 
 person that saw a mystery in my darling's 
 face. Give me the mysteries ; they are 
 mine. If there is "radiance " it belongs to 
 me. Ah, I shall have to lock you up. You 
 are too bewilderingly handsome to be allowed 
 to go about. The Turks are right. I am 
 rapidly becoming a Turk. If I could carry 
 you off to a villa on the Bosporus, I would 
 straightway become a Moslem. I should 
 be your master, and you could not escape. 
 Would you want to ? 
 
 Last night again I had a dream of 
 thee ! Ah, in my dreams I am like one 
 under delicious spells. The happy victim 
 of some tender witchery, the enamored
 
 HIS LETTERS 273 
 
 slave of an impassioned mistress, whose 
 harshest injunction is to love . . . and 
 love. 
 
 And then, alas ! I wake. 
 
 Letter One Hundred and Eleventh. 
 
 Do we not have our fill of romance, sweet 
 Helo ? or did I dream that someone cried 
 " Fire " when we were together in your 
 studio. I would have wrapped my coat 
 over your face and bosom, and you 
 would have taken my hand, and thus I 
 would have conveyed you through the flame. 
 I doubt if all the engines in the city could 
 put out the flames that your loveliness 
 kindles ! Dearest, tell me, is your throat 
 better ? It is the strangest thing I also 
 have a sore throat this morning. I never 
 was so delighted in my life ; I want to have 
 everything that you have. Before God, if 
 I knew that you were dying of diphtheria, 
 I would upset the earth to get to you, that 
 I might drink your breath and rejoin you 
 quickly. There is no doubt about it that 
 since I knew you I am becoming a convert 
 to Islam. And if I believed in the harem,
 
 274 HIS LETTERS 
 
 I should not care for any odalisques. One 
 sultana would suffice, provided her name 
 was yours. But I would have her guarded 
 with drawn swords ; and never should she 
 put her face out of the zenana, except in her 
 lord's company. I am afraid you think a 
 palace on the Bosporus would be a dismal 
 prospect for a belle ! 
 
 Letter One Hundred and Twelfth. 
 
 My adored one, I have your telegram 
 Then you did not like one of my letters ? 
 Ah me, and I was so foolishly happy. No 
 sooner had I written and dispatched that 
 poor little missive than I desired to live 
 over again the hours that I passed with you. 
 First I drove up the river and got some 
 dinner, or pretended to, sitting at the same 
 table, and in the very chair where she had 
 sat Then I came home, threw myself on 
 the sofa, in my study, determined to sleep 
 or dream there. It is a strange fancy, but 
 it is a fact that I fell into a deep, refreshing 
 slumber, an amazing contrast to the broken 
 and feverish hours of the preceding night. 
 But alas, perhaps she doesn't want me to
 
 HIS LETTERS 275 
 
 sleep ; perhaps she doesn't want me to feel 
 happy. 
 
 Letter One Hundred and Thirteenth. 
 
 What an extraordinary thing is love ! I 
 perceive that I never knew anything about 
 it until you flashed upon me, and I fell 
 forthwith to worshiping. I really used to 
 be fool enough to suppose that love was all 
 fun. Heavens ! there is very little fun in it. 
 There is some rapture and a great deal of 
 torment. And the strangest thing of all is 
 that even the torments your beloved causes 
 you seem ecstasies compared with any 
 pleasures another could give. 
 
 Ah, do you know that you put a wonder- 
 ful vitality and delicious meaning into even 
 the commonplace phrases which I used to 
 loathe. It is a copybook aphorism that 
 love is a madness. How often have I 
 smiled at that ! Why it is true. I am 
 quite mad. I know that I have not been 
 sane an hour since you came back ; and 
 even before that I had shown many signs of 
 aberration. On the night of your depar- 
 ture, for example, it would have needed but
 
 27^ HIS LETTERS 
 
 little more to upset my reason. And yet 
 the sweet and splendid creature that has so 
 conquered, demented, absorbed me that I 
 only breathe at her good pleasure, has 
 sometimes bidden me to " pause and think." 
 Why, would she have my heart stop beat- 
 ing ? While it beats at all it will beat for 
 her. And thinking ? What then does she 
 call this incessant preoccupation of my 
 brain ? When I cease, dearest, to think of 
 you, be sure that I am dead. 
 
 Then there is another conventional phrase 
 which I used to hear with amused incredu- 
 lity. " He actually adores the ground she 
 walks upon." Well this too is true. Did 
 I not stoop and kiss your footprints on the 
 sand ? 
 
 Letter One Hundred and Fourteenth. 
 
 To-night I had been inveigled into joining 
 a party to the play. But when the evening 
 came, having received no letter from you, I 
 was actually ill. It is incredible what power 
 the mind has on the body. So I got out 
 of my engagement as best I could, and oh, 
 how thankful I was that I had not gone !
 
 tffS LETTERS 277 
 
 For your dear, dear letter came at last. I 
 have kissed every page. Ah, you make me 
 good as well as happy ; you make me be- 
 lieve in God. How else can I account for 
 the existence of such a beautiful and noble 
 being? Thank you for telling me that you 
 don't flirt. I will try to believe you, since 
 you cannot guess what that belief will mean 
 to me. As for me, I don't know that any 
 other woman is existing. If I had to see and 
 be civil to other women, they would be repul- 
 sive, loathsome to me. I pity other men 
 who imagine that there are any real women 
 in the world except one. Of course I am 
 your slave ; you have put a ribbon around 
 my neck. You didn't need a chain ; of 
 course I would obey your slightest wish. 
 
 Do you know, I have heard your eyes 
 called cruel, but to me they seem full of 
 tenderness. Sometimes I feel that I could 
 be satisfied with lying forever at your slen- 
 der feet, and riveting my eyes upon the 
 witchery of your face ; and again, I feel that 
 nothing will content me but to seize and 
 crush you and make you my own. So I 
 really cannot tell whether my passion for
 
 278 HIS LETTERS 
 
 you has more of gentleness or of fierceness 
 in it. 
 
 Last Letter One Hundred and Fifteenth. 
 
 When I found nothing to-day, I rushed 
 over to a quiet nook, and read over for the 
 hundredth time the few of my darling's 
 letters there are five of them which I still 
 retain ; especially the precious one which 
 you penned just before your departure. I 
 never burn one of your letters without feel- 
 ing as if I had committed a murder, as if I 
 had killed something whose beauty and 
 nobility should have been guaranties of im- 
 mortality. What delicious things you say 
 to me ! What a wonderful thing is passion 
 when it is refined, inflamed, and glorified by 
 the soul of a genius and the delicacy of a 
 great lady. . . . 
 
 In one of your letters you say that there 
 is a side of your character that I have never 
 seen an irritable side. I never shall see it, 
 dearest ; it is not natural to you. In an at- 
 mosphere of instant comprehension, perfect 
 sympathy, and devoted love what could 
 chafe or exasperate ? I know well what
 
 7/75 LETTERS 279 
 
 are the conditions that clog and cramp and 
 stifle a sensitive and aspiring nature. It 
 would be ridiculous to compare myself to 
 thee from such a point of view, but even 
 I, who used to be the most even-tempered 
 of men, have of late rebelled against non- 
 comprehension, and become impatient. 
 But I have shown no traces of such a 
 change to you, sweet one, have I ? How 
 could I when you make me so happy and 
 so proud ? For your words and your be- 
 witching presence fill me with a happiness 
 that I have never dreamed before. 
 
 My precious dear, I wonder whether any 
 man has loved a woman precisely as I love 
 you. My love is the strangest combination 
 of passion, sympathy, admiration, and re- 
 spect. I cannot separate the elements even 
 in imagination, they are so intimately 
 blended, chemically fused. What potion 
 hast thou given me, oh, thou daughter of the 
 gods ? Why is it that I know not whether 
 to kneel to you in worship, or to seize you in 
 my arms and learn whether my divinity is 
 also a loving woman ? You have brought 
 sunshine into my life. Nature has stamped
 
 z8o HIS LETTERS 
 
 upon you all her enthralling graces. Never 
 shall I forget my feelings, the other after- 
 noon, when, after stopping your carriage, I 
 turned sharply, and saw her my goddess 
 advancing toward me, tripping as Aurora 
 tripped no, floating, skimming like a splen- 
 did sailing-ship under full canvas, on an en- 
 amored gale. My heavens, what a sight was 
 that ! I think that in my death hour that 
 sight will come to my fast closing eyes, and 
 they that watch beside my pillow will see a 
 smile upon my lips ; for I shall see you, dar- 
 ling, coming to meet me to meet me 
 somewhere on the further side of Styx. 
 
 THE END.
 
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