LETTER XXXIII.

Graysmill, March 5th.

Thank you, sweet one, for the eight dear pages.  I feel ashamed of the scrap I sent you the day before yesterday.  I never felt so lazy in my life as I feel now.  One thing is certain, happiness is not altogether good.  Blake says somewhere, “Damn braces, bless relaxes.”  Perhaps he was right.

I am losing myself completely.  Every time I part from him I feel that he has taken yet a little more of me away.  He absorbs me, heart and soul.  I do not complain.  I feel a little ashamed of myself from time to time, when I realise how callous I have become to everything else, when, no matter what book I take down from the shelf, I find I cannot read half a page connectedly; otherwise I am perfectly content that it should be so.  Impersonal things—­Nature, Music—­have perhaps strengthened their hold on me; because they flatter my selfishness, so to speak, they are always in tune with my heart.  Gabriel more than makes up for my degeneracy; of course that should be, seeing that he has taken unto himself all my intellectual faculties!

He is writing a simply astounding poem; he reads it to me as it grows.  I tell him he is much more in love with it than with me!  When we are out, he falls into deep dreams; sometimes, when they are of the kind that words can fetter, he brings them within my reach, and then we float together into the realms of air.

But, although we are hand in hand, I know that he has sight of things I cannot see, hears voices I cannot hear; I only clearly see one vision, him; hear but one voice, my own, that says, I love you.

Shall I tell you something?  I would not tell him for the world; he would deny it; he would not understand; but you I will tell.  It is this:  I love him more than he loves me, and in that thought I find content.  When two love, one must love more than the other, and blessed is he who loves best.  I think that if I felt his love o’ershadowed mine, I should be miserable, I should have some sensation of unpayable debt.  As it stands, he does not know he is my debtor; only I know it, and I delight in the knowledge.  Let him love me and love me, he will never love me enough; on the other hand, I yearn so for his love that all he gives me I cherish and am grateful for; by this means, whether he love me much or little, I shall always be satisfied.

You must not suppose, because of what I say, that he does not love me intensely; my love is unmatchable, that is all.  He tells me every day that he could not live without me, and, indeed, it is true.  He relies upon me entirely, calls upon my care incessantly; and very sweet it is to feel that the supreme God of my Heaven is as a child in my arms.  Ah, I am happy, the world is good, and now the spring is coming.  We rejoice in the growth of the year; Gabriel longs for the first primrose.  He is so hard at work that I think it unlikely we shall get married before the end of April; the poem is writing itself at present; it would be a sin to interfere with its progress.  I think, too, that if he can possibly finish it, he will be able to go away with a greater content upon him, with the satisfaction that only achievement brings.  It is, in fact, very long since he last completed anything.