t the
poets have written. They go through me like ghosts: I am haunted by
them: but they are bloodless things. It seems when I listen to all the
other desolate voices that have ever cried, that I alone have blood in
me. Nobody ever loved as I love since the world began.

There, dearest, take this, all this bitter wine of me poured out until I
feel in myself only the dregs left: and still in them is the fire and
the suffering.

No: but I will be better: it is better to have known you than not. Give
me time, dearest, to get you to heart again! I cannot leave you like
this: not with such words as these for "good-night!"

Oh, dear face, dear unforgettable lost face, my soul strains up to look
for you through the blind eyes that have been left to torment me because
they can never behold you. Very often I have seen you looking grieved,
shutting away some sorrow in yourself quietly: but never once angry or
impatient at any of the small follies of men. Come, then, and look at me
patiently now! I am your blind girl: I must cry out because I cannot see
you. Only make me believe that you yet think of me as, when you so
unbelievably separated us, you said you had always found me--"the
dearest and most true-hearted woman a man could pray to meet." Beloved,
if in your heart I am still that, separation does not matter. I can
wait, I can wait.

I kiss your feet: even to-morrow may bring the light. God bless you! I
pray it more than ever; because to me to-night has been so very dark.

LETTER LXXIX.

Dearest: I have not written to you for three weeks. At last I am better
again. You seem to have been waiting for me here: always wondering when I
would come back. I do come back, you see.

Dear heart, how are you? I kiss your feet; you are my one only happiness,
my great one. Words are too cold and cruel to write anything for me.
Picture me: I am too weak to write more, but I have written this, and am
so much better for it.

Reward me some day by reading what is here. I kiss, because of you, this
paper which I am too tired to fill any more.

Love, nothing but love! Into every one of these dead words my heart has
been beating, trying to lay down its life and reach to you.

LETTER LXXX.

A secret, dearest, that will be no secret soon: before I am done with
twenty-three I shall have passed my age. Beloved, it hurts me more than I
can say that the news of it should come to you from anyone but me: for
this, though I