I said a prayer for them, and went to sleep again as the sound of the lambs died away; but somehow they stick in my heart, those sad sheep driven along through the night.  It was in its degree like the woman hurrying along, who said, “My God, my God!” that summer Sunday morning.  These notes from lives that appear and disappear remain endlessly; and I do not think our hearts can have been made so sensitive to suffering we can do nothing to relieve, without some good reason.  So I tell you this, as I would any sorrow of my own, because it has become a part of me, and is underlying all that I think to-day.

I am to expect you the day after to-morrow, but “not for certain”?  Thus you give and you take away, equally blessed in either case.  All the same, I shall certainly expect you, and be disappointed if on Thursday at about this hour your way be not my way.

“How shall I my true love know” if he does not come often enough to see me?  Sunshine be on you all possible hours till we meet again.

LETTER IX.

Beloved:  Is the morning looking at you as it is looking at me?  A little to the right of the sun there lies a small cloud, filmy and faint, but enough to cast a shadow somewhere.  From this window, high up over the view, I cannot see where the shadow of it falls,—­further than my eye can reach:  perhaps just now over you, since you lie further west.  But I cannot be sure.  We cannot be sure about the near things in this world; only about what is far off and fixed.

You and I looking up see the same sun, if there are no clouds over us:  but we may not be looking at the same clouds even when both our hearts are in shadow.  That is so, even when hearts are as close together as yours and mine:  they respond to the same light:  but each one has its own roof of shadow, wearing its rue with a world of difference.

Why is it? why can no two of us have sorrows quite in common?  What can be nearer together than our wills to be one?  In joy we are; and yet, though I reach and reach, and sadden if you are sad, I cannot make your sorrow my own.

I suppose sorrow is of the earth earthy:  and all that is of earth makes division.  Every joy that belongs to the body casts shadows somewhere.  I wonder if there can enter into us a joy that has no shadow anywhere?  The joy of having you has behind it the shadow of parting; is there any way of loving that would make parting no sorrow at all?  To me, now, the idea seems treason!  I cling to my sorrow that you are not here:  I send up my cloud, as it were, to catch the sun’s brightness:  it is a kite that I pull with my heart-strings.

To the sun of love the clouds that cover absence must look like white flowers in the green fields of earth, or like doves hovering:  and he reaches down and strokes them with his warm beams, making all their feathers like gold.

Some clouds let the gold come through; mine, now.—­That cloud I saw away to the right is coming this way toward me.  I can see the shadow of it now, moving along a far-off strip of road:  and I wonder if it is your cloud, with you under it coming to see me again!