hur, yet I put out the eyes of many
kings, princes, and governors who incurred my displeasure, scratching them
with pins till only a white blur remained on the paper.

All this comes to me quite seriously now: I used to laugh thinking it
over. But can a single thing we do be called trivial, since out of it we
grow up minute by minute into a whole being charged with capacity for
gladness or suffering?

Now, as I look back, all these atoms of memory are dust and ashes that I
have walked through in order to get to present things. How I suffer, how
I suffer! If you could have dreamed that a human body could contain so
much suffering, I think you would have chosen a less dreadful way of
showing me your will: you would have given me a reason why I have to
suffer so.

Dearest, I am broken off every habit I ever had, except my love of you. If
you would come back to me you could shape me into whatever you wished. I
will be different in all but just that one thing.

LETTER LXXII.

Here in my pain, Beloved, I remember keenly now the one or two occasions
when as a small child I was consciously a cause of pain to others. What an
irony of life that once of the two times when I remember to have been
cruel, it was to Arthur, with his small astonished baby-face remaining a
reproach to me ever after! I was hardly five then, and going up to the
nursery from downstairs had my supper-cake in my hand, only a few
mouthfuls left. He had been having his bath, and was sitting up on
Nan-nan's knee being got into his bed clothes; when spying me with my cake
he piped to have a share of it. I dare say it would not have been good for
him, but of that I thought nothing at all: the cruel impulse took me to
make one mouthful of all that was left. He watched it go without crying;
but his eyes opened at me in a strange way, wondering at this sudden
lesson of the hardness of a human heart. "All gone!" was what he said,
turning his head from me up to Nan-nan, to see perhaps if she too had a
like surprise for his wee intelligence. I think I have never forgiven
myself that, though Arthur has no memory of it left in him: the judging
remembrance of it would, I believe, win forgiveness to him for any wrong
he might now do me, if that and not the contrary were his way with me: so
unreasonably is my brain scarred where the thought of it still lies. God
may forgive us our trespasses by marvelous slow ways; but we cannot always
forgive them ourselves.