Dearest: I could never have made any appeal _from_ you to anybody: all my
appeal has been _to_ you alone. I have wished to hear reason from no other
lips but yours; and had you but really and deeply confided in me, I
believe I could have submitted almost with a light heart to what you
thought best:--though in no way and by no stretch of the imagination can I
see you coming to me for the last time and _saying_, as you only wrote,
that it was best we should never see each other again.
You could not have said that with any sound of truth; and how can it
look truer frozen into writing? I have kissed the words, because you
wrote them; not believing them. It is a suspense of unbelief that you
have left me in, oh, still dearest! Yet never was sad heart truer to the
fountain of all its joy than mine to yours. You had only to see me to
know that.
Some day, I dream, we shall come suddenly together, and you will see,
before a word, before I have time to gather my mind back to the bodily
comfort of your presence, a face filled with thoughts of you that have
never left it, and never been bitter:--I believe never once bitter. For
even when I think, and convince myself that you have wronged yourself--and
so, me also,--even then: oh, then most of all, my heart seems to break
with tenderness, and my spirit grow more famished than ever for the want
of you! For if you have done right, wisely, then you have no longer any
need of me: but if you have done wrong, then you must need me.
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