r find a being who
could keep the key of my character; that there would be none
on whom I could always lean, from whom I could always learn;
that I should be a pilgrim and sojourner on earth, and that
the birds and foxes would be surer of a place to lay the head
than I. You understand me, of course; such beings can only
find their homes in hearts. All material luxuries, all the
arrangements of society, are mere conveniences to them.

'This thought, all whose bearings I did not, indeed,
understand, affected me sometimes with sadness, sometimes
with pride. I mourned that I never should have a thorough
experience of life, never know the full riches of my being; I
was proud that I was to test myself in the sternest way, that
I was always to return to myself, to be my own priest,
pupil, parent, child, husband, and wife. All this I did not
understand as I do now; but this destiny of the thinker, and
(shall I dare to say it?) of the poetic priestess, sibylline,
dwelling in the cave, or amid the Lybian sands, lay yet
enfolded in my mind. Accordingly, I did not look on any of the
persons, brought into relation with me, with common womanly
eyes.

'Yet, as my character is, after all, still more feminine than
masculine, it would sometimes happen that I put more emotion
into a state than I myself knew. I really was capable or
attachment, though it never seemed so till the hour of
separation. And if a connexion was torn up by the roots, the
soil of my existence showed an unsightly wound, which long
refused to clothe itself in verdure.

'With regard to yourself, I was to you all that I wished to
be. I knew that I reigned in your thoughts in my own way.
And I also lived with you more truly and freely than with any
other person. We were truly friends, but it was not friends
as men are friends to one another, or as brother and sister.
There was, also, that pleasure, which may, perhaps, be termed
conjugal, of finding oneself in an alien nature. Is there any
tinge of love in this? Possibly! At least, in comparing it
with my relation to--, I find _that_ was strictly fraternal.
I valued him for himself. I did not care for an influence over
him, and was perfectly willing to have one or fifty rivals in
his heart. * *

* * 'I think I may say, I never loved. I but see my possible