a wound that only magic balm could heal.
I've decided that when things are very bad with me here, I'll try that
way of escape again. I will send my thoughts to the Mirador garden, and
the comfort that nobody but you--who understand so marvelously--can
even be _asked_ to give. Do you mind my flying to you? Will you
'pretend' too, sometimes in those starlit nights, that I have come to
ask your advice and help? Will you feel as if I were actually there,
and will you put the advice into words? Maybe they'll reach me so. I do
believe they will. And I am needing such words more than ever lately. I
can hardly wait for them to come in letters. Though I have the
'invisible wall of love' to lean against, that you told me of (and I
_do_ lean hard!), there is an influence which tries always to drag me
away from that dear support, making it seem not to belong to me after
all. There's a voice which tells me I was never really loved by the one
whose memory I worship; that he asked me to marry him only because
mother practically forced him to do so. This isn't an _inner_ voice.
It's the voice of a person whose jealousy and cruelty I _must_ forgive,
or be as cruel myself. The voice says it has reason to be sure that all
it tells me is true; that it's useless for me to ask mother, because
she would deny it; besides, she is too ill to be troubled or reproached
about anything. You know, I have two invalids now, so I can't do much
for any one outside, except send money--_his_ money, to the poor and
the wounded.

"The terrible voice hammers constantly on my heart, and is breaking it
to pieces, in spite of your help. For even you can't help me there. How
could you, when about that one thing--that principal thing of all, it
seems now--you have no knowledge? You can't know whether _he_ ever
loved me as a man loves one woman, or whether he was simply willing to
spread his generous protection round me for the future, when he was
going away to risk his life. It would have been like him to do that, I
have to admit in some moods. And I hate the moods, and hate the voice
for putting the idea--which mercifully hadn't struck me before--into my
head. I oughtn't to hate the voice, because it may be that its
wickedness--almost fiendish at times--is caused only by hopeless
suffering. I strive to say to myself, as I think you would wish me to
say, 'Could a bird who had been blinded and thrown into a cage where it
never saw sunshine, do better than croak, or