o you, I wonder, remember
your father better than I mine:--or your brother? Are they more living
because you saw them once not living? I think death might open our eyes to
those we lived on ill terms with, but not to the familiar and dear. I do
not need you dead, to be certain that your heart has mine for its true
inmate and mine yours.

I love you, I love you: so let good-night bring you good-morning!

N.

At long intervals, dearest, I write to you a secret all about yourself for
my eyes to see: because, chiefly because, I have not you to look at. Thus
I bless myself with you.

Away over the world west of this and a little bit north is the city of
spires where you are now. Never having seen it I am the more free to
picture it as I like: and to me it is quite full of you:--quite greedily
full, Beloved, when elsewhere you are so much wanted! I send my thoughts
there to pick up crumbs for me.

It is a strange blend of notions--wisdom and ignorance combined: for
_you_ I seem to know perfectly; but of your life nothing at all. And
yet nobody there knows so much about you as I. What you _do_ matters so
much less than what you are. You, who are the clearest heart in all the
world, do what you will, you are so still to me, Beloved.

I take a happy armful of thoughts about you into all my dreams: and when
I wake they are there still, and have done nothing but remain true. What
better can I ask of them?

You do love me: you have not changed? Without change I remain yours so
long as I live.

O.

And you, Beloved, what are you thinking of me all this while? Think well
of me, I beg you: I deserve so much, loving you as truly as I do!

So often, dearest, I sit thinking my hands into yours again as when we
were saying good-by the last time. Then it was, under our laughter and
light words, that I saw suddenly how the thing too great to name had
become true, that from friends we were changed into lovers. It seemed the
most natural thing to be, and yet was wonderful--for it was I who loved
you first: a thing I could never be ashamed of, and am now proud to
own--for has it not proved me wise? My love for you is the best wisdom
that I have. Good-night, dearest! Sleep as well as I love you, and nobody
in the world will sleep so soundly.

P.

A few times in my life, Beloved, I have had the Blue-moon-hunger for
something which seemed too impossible and good ever to come true: prosaic
people call it being "in the blues";