y's, and they are set down here in the order in which they were
written, though the first one takes the reader back a few weeks to
December 5, 1903. It was posted at Rome, and in the body of it are
found these words:--

"My dear, I know you will smile when you hear I have been reading
all the Italian scientific books I can find, dealing with the human
brain--partly to help my Italian, but chiefly, I think, to see if I
can find and formulate some sort of a definition for love. It is so
much a part of my soul, dear heart, that I would like to know more
about it. And I am going to write down for you what I think it is as
we know it. I have been wearing your ring nearly three years, Neal,
and if you had only known it, I would have been happy to have taken
it a year sooner. In those four years I have grown from a girl to a
woman, and you have become a man full grown. In that time all my
thoughts have centred on you. In all my schoolbooks your face comes
back to me as I open them in fancy. As I think of the old room at
school, of my walk up the hill, as I think of home and my room
there, some thought of you is always between me and the picture. All
through my physical brain are little fibres running to every centre
that bring up images of you. You are woven into my life, and I know
in my heart that I am woven into your life. The thing is done; it is
as much apart of my being as my blood--those million fibres of my
brain that from every part of my consciousness bring thoughts of
you. We cannot be separated now, darling--we are united for life,
whether we unite in life or not. I am yours and you are mine. It is
now as inexorable as anything we call material. More than that--you
have made my soul. All the aspirations of my spiritual life go to
you for beginning and for being as truly as the fibres of my brain
thrill to the sound of your name or the mental image of your face.
My soul is your soul, because in the making the thought of you was
uppermost. I know that my love for you is immortal, ineffaceable,
and though I should live a hundred years, that love would still be
as much a part of my life as my hands or my eyes or my body. And the
best of it all is that I am so glad it is so. Divorce is as
impossible with a love like that as amputation of the brain. It is
big and vital in me, real and certain, an