You were so dear to me, Beloved; that you ever are!  Time changes nothing in you as you seemed to me then.  Oh, I am sick to touch your hands:  all my thoughts run to your service:  they seem to hear you call, only to find locked doors.

If you could see me now I think you would open the door for a little while.

If they came and told me—­“You are to see him just for five minutes, and then part again”—­what should I be wanting most to say to you?  Nothing—­ only “Speak, speak!” I would have you fill my heart with your voice the whole time:  five minutes more of you to fold my life round.  It would matter very little what you said, barring the one thing that remains never to be said.

Oh, could all this silence teach me the one thing I am longing to know!—­ why am I unworthy of you?  If I cannot be your wife, why cannot I see you still,—­serve you if possible?  I would be grateful.

You meant to be generous; and wishing not to wound me, you said that “there was no fault” in me.  I realize now that you would not have said that to the woman you still loved.  And now I am never to know what part in me is hateful to you.  I must live with it because you would not tell me the truth!

Every day tells me I am different from the thing I wish to be—­your love, the woman you approve.

I love you, I love you!  Can I get no nearer to you ever for all this straining?  If I love you so much, I must be moving toward what you would have me be.  In our happiest days my heart had its growing pains,—­growing to be as you wished it.

Dear, even the wisest make mistakes, and the tenderest may be hard without knowing:  I do not think I am unworthy of you, if you knew all.

Writing to you now seems weakness:  yet it seemed peace to come in here and cry to you.  And when I go about I have still strength left, and try to be cheerful.  Nobody knows, I think nobody knows.  No one in the house is made downcast because of me.  How dear they are, and how little I can thank them!  Except to you, dearest, I have not shown myself selfish.

I love you too much, too much:  I cannot write it.

LETTER LXI.

You are very ill, they tell me.  Beloved, it is such kindness in them to have regard for the wish they disapprove and to let me know.  Knowledge is the one thing needful whose lack has deprived me of my happiness:  the express image of sorrow is not so terrible as the foreboding doubt of it.  Not because you are ill, but because I know something definitely about you, I am happier to-day:  a little nearer to a semblance of service to you in my helplessness.  How much I wish you well, even though that might again carry you out of my knowledge!  And, though death might bring you nearer than life now makes possible, I pray to you, dearest, not to die.  It is not right that you should die yet, with a mistake in your heart which a little more life might clear away.