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.
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