reads of in books and poems, seems out of place.  I thought that it would surprise, even frighten you, perhaps, if I were to tell you all that I felt.  And now you have written me two letters, which contain all that I should have said if I had spoken from my heart.  It is all my own inmost thought, and there is not a feeling that I do not share.  O Maude, I may write lightly and speak lightly, perhaps, sometimes, but there never was a woman, never, never in all the story of the world, who was loved more passionately than you are loved by me.  Come what may, while the world lasts and the breath of life is between my lips, you are the one woman to me.  If we are together, I care nothing for what the future may bring.  If we are not together, all the world cannot fill the void.

You say that I have given an impulse to your life:  that you read more, study more, take a keener interest in everything.  You could not possibly have said a thing which could have given me more pleasure than that.  It is splendid!  It justifies me in aspiring to you.  It satisfies my conscience over everything which I have done.  It must be right if that is the effect.  I have felt so happy and light-hearted ever since you said it.  It is rather absurd to think that I should improve you, but if you in your sweet frankness say that it is so, why, I can only marvel and rejoice.

But you must not study and work too hard.  You say that you do it to please me, but that would not please me.  I’ll tell you an anecdote as a dreadful example.  I had a friend who was a great lover of Eastern literature, Sanskrit, and so on.  He loved a lady.  The lady to please him worked hard at these subjects also.  In a month she had shattered her nervous system, and will perhaps never be the same again.  It was impossible.  She was not meant for it, and yet she made herself a martyr over it.  I don’t mean by this parable that it will be a strain upon your intellect to keep up with mine.  But I do mean that a woman’s mind is different from a man’s.  A dainty rapier is a finer thing than a hatchet, but it is not adapted for cutting down trees all the same.

Rupton Hale, the architect, one of the few friends I have down here, has some most deplorable views about women.  I played a round of the Byfleet Golf Links with him upon Wednesday afternoon, and we discussed the question of women’s intellects.  He would have it that they have never a light of their own, but are always the reflectors of some other light which you cannot see.  He would allow that they were extraordinarily quick in assimilating another person’s views, but that was all.  I quoted some very shrewd remarks which a lady had made to me at dinner.  ‘Those are the traces of the last man,’ said he.  According to his preposterous theory, you could in conversation with a woman reconstruct the last man who had made an impression to her.  ‘She will reflect you upon the next person she talks to,’ said he.  It was ungallant, but it was ingenious.