ompleteness. For your
spirit, too, stands distinct and perfect before me, not as an
apparition which appears and fades away again, but as one of the forms
that endure forever. It looks at me joyously out of its deep eyes and
opens its arms to embrace my spirit. The holiest and most evanescent
of those delicate traits and utterances of the soul, which to one who
does not know the highest seem like bliss itself, are merely the
common atmosphere of our spiritual breath and life.

The words are weak and vague. Furthermore, in this throng of
impressions I could only repeat anew the one inexhaustible feeling of
our original harmony. A great future beckons me on into the
immeasurable; each idea develops a countless progeny. The extremes of
unbridled gayety and of quiet presentiment live together within me. I
remember everything, even the griefs, and all my thoughts that have
been and are to be bestir themselves and arise before me. The blood
rushes wildly through my swollen veins, my mouth thirsts for the
contact of your lips, and my fancy seeks vainly among the many forms
of joy for one which might at last gratify my desire and give it rest.
And then again I suddenly and sadly bethink me of the gloomy time when
I was always waiting without hope, and madly loving without knowing
it; when my innermost being overflowed with a vague longing, which it
breathed forth but rarely in half-suppressed sighs.

Oh, I should have thought it all a fairy-tale that there could be such
joy, such love as I now feel, and such a woman, who could be my most
tender Beloved, my best companion, and at the same time a perfect
friend. For it was in friendship especially that I sought for what I
wanted, and for what I never hoped to find in any woman. In you I
found it all, and more than I could wish for; but you are so unlike
the rest. Of what custom or caprice calls womanly, you know nothing.
The womanliness of your soul, aside from minor peculiarities, consists
in its regarding life and love as the same thing. For you all feeling
is infinite and eternal; you recognize no separations, your being is
an indivisible unity. That is why you are so serious and so joyous,
why you regard everything in such a large and indifferent way; that is
why you love me, all of me, and will surrender no part of me to the
state, to posterity, or to manly pleasures. I am all yours; we are
closest to each other and we understand each other. You accompany me
through all th