Constance, I am going to tell you all; I trust so to your understanding and your love.  It seems strange, perhaps, to speak as I am about to speak; I shall burst if I don’t.  It is this:  I love him, I love him horribly, horribly; I cannot bear it.  Why must one do this?  Why couldn’t it last, our white friendship?  On his side it might; he loves me, I know, but only as I loved him at first.  He loves me very much.  I am grown in a way indispensable to him, but his love makes him content; it will not kill him.  Mine is grown unbearable.

Perhaps I should have told you this before, yet I have not known it very long.  I knew some time ago that all my joy is in him; he has been for many weeks the goal of my eyes, the centre of my thought; the time I spent away from him was dead time; when I was with him I was flooded in peace.  But all this was joy, not pain.  That came later; the time I spent away from him was no longer dead, it was living longing.

One day, about a week ago, I had forgotten him (I forget how I managed that!), but suddenly the thought of him returned to me.  I felt a sudden sharp pain at my heart, a sort of aching that tingled through me to my very finger-tips.  I knew then how it was with me.

Next day I did not go to meet him in the wood as I had promised; I went straight to the cottage; I feared myself.  When he returned at tea-time, he came up to me and took my hand with more friendship than of wont.

“Oh, Emilia!” he cried, “why have you failed me?  I have been so anxious; I feared you were ill.”

He said this as a brother might have said it; he looked me full in the face as serenely as the stars at night.  I looked back at him; his calm fell upon me, and I laughed at myself for my fears.  I got better after that, yet not well; I was never at ease.  To-day we were together very long; I was perfectly happy; we had spoken of beautiful things, calmly, in great peace.  But at parting he forgot to let my hand go; he held it so long that I had time to feel his, and my blood bounded through me in great waves.  I still think he must have felt it; if he did, I can never look at him again.

I hate myself for loving him so; I hate myself that I suffer through him; the fault seems his, being entirely mine.

And now I wish that I had never seen him, that all these days of joy were wiped out of my life; for the joy is turned to misery and pain, and for this there can be no cure.  If he grew to love me as I do him, it would be unearthly; such happiness is not for this world.  I think that if he loved me, one of us would surely die.  This is the world, O Constance!  Bursts of beauty, bursts of bliss, but none to live untouched, none to endure.

I have been happy; I should not groan.

Write to me, dear. 
Your Emilia.

LETTER XXII.

Graysmill, December 29th.