you see—­or call it by what name you like ... too wise or too foolish.  ’If the light of the body is darkness, how great is that darkness.’  Yet even when I grow too wise, I admit always that while you love me it is an answer to all.  And I am never so much too foolish as to wish to be worthier for my own sake—­only for yours:—­not for my own sake, since I am content to owe all things to you.

And it could be so much to you to lose me!—­and you say so,—­and then think it needful to tell me not to think the other thought!  As if that were possible!  Do you remember what you said once of the flowers?—­that you ’felt a respect for them when they had passed out of your hands.’  And must it not be so with my life, which if you choose to have it, must be respected too?  Much more with my life!  Also, see that I, who had my warmest affections on the other side of the grave, feel that it is otherwise with me now—­quite otherwise.  I did not like it at first to be so much otherwise.  And I could not have had any such thought through a weariness of life or any of my old motives, but simply to escape the ‘risk’ I told you of.  Should I have said to you instead of it ... ‘Love me for ever’?  Well then, ...  I do.

As to my ‘helping’ you, my help is in your fancy; and if you go on with the fancy, I perfectly understand that it will be as good as deeds.  We have sympathy too—­we walk one way—­oh, I do not forget the advantages.  Only Mrs. Tomkins’s ideas of happiness are below my ambition for you.

So often as I have said (it reminds me) that in this situation I should be more exacting than any other woman—­so often I have said it:  and so different everything is from what I thought it would be!  Because if I am exacting it is for you and not for me—­it is altogether for you—­you understand that, dearest of all ... it is for you wholly.  It never crosses my thought, in a lightning even, the question whether I may be happy so and so—­I.  It is the other question which comes always—­too often for peace.

People used to say to me, ‘You expect too much—­you are too romantic.’  And my answer always was that ’I could not expect too much when I expected nothing at all’ ... which was the truth—­for I never thought (and how often I have said that!) I never thought that anyone whom I could love, would stoop to love me ... the two things seemed clearly incompatible to my understanding.

And now when it comes in a miracle, you wonder at me for looking twice, thrice, four times, to see if it comes through ivory or horn.  You wonder that it should seem to me at first all illusion—­illusion for you,—­illusion for me as a consequence.  But how natural.