He is strong and handsome, and I love him for that,
and I admire him and am proud of him, but I could
love him without those qualities. He he were
plain, I should love him; if he were a wreck, I should
love him; and I would work for him, and slave over
him, and pray for him, and watch by his bedside until
I died.
Yes, I think I love him merely because he is mine
and is masculine. There is no other reason,
I suppose. And so I think it is as I first said:
that this kind of love is not a product of reasonings
and statistics. It just comes—none
knows whence—and cannot explain itself.
And doesn’t need to.
It is what I think. But I am only a girl, the
first that has examined this matter, and it may turn
out that in my ignorance and inexperience I have not
got it right.
It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass
from this life together—a longing which
shall never perish from the earth, but shall have
place in the heart of every wife that loves, until
the end of time; and it shall be called by my name.
But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that
it shall be I; for he is strong, I am weak, I am not
so necessary to him as he is to me—life
without him would not be life; now could I endure it?
This prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from
being offered up while my race continues. I
am the first wife; and in the last wife I shall be
repeated.
Adam: Wheresoever she was, there was
Eden.
