Since then the poignancy of my regret when I think of it has
never softened. The question which pride of life and love of make-believe
till then had not raised in me, "Am I a god to kill and to make alive?"
was answered all at once by an emphatic "No," which I never afterward
forgot. But the grief remained all the same, that life, to teach me that
blunt truth, should have had to make sacrifice in the mote-hung loft of
three frail lives on a clay-altar, and bring to nothing but pain and a
last miserable dart away into the bright sunshine the spring work of two
swift-winged intelligences. Is man, we are told to think, not worth many
sparrows? Oh, Beloved, sometimes I doubt it! and would in thought give my
life that those swallows in their generations might live again.
Beloved, I am letting what I have tried to tell you of my childhood end
in a sad way. For it is no use, no use: I have not to-day a glimmer of
hope left that your eyes will ever rest on what I have been at such deep
trouble to write.
If I were being punished for these two childish things I did, I should
see a side of justice in it all. But it is for loving you I am being
punished: and not God himself shall make me let you go! Beloved,
Beloved, all my days are at your feet, and among them days when you held
me to your heart. Good-night; good-night always now!
LETTER LXXIII.
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