o a higher universe. There were no barriers now, nothing but
this joyous, confident life into which her womanhood had passed at that
moment when, swept onward by the flood, she had thrown her arms around
him.

"Dearest," she wrote, "my whole past life seems like a half-slumber from
which I have awakened into a world almost too dazzling with light and
joy. Yet who am I that this joy should have come to me? When I think of
the years when I lived alone with my own thoughts, it seems wonderful
that your love should have been granted to me. The world is full of pale
ghosts that come and go, not knowing what life is, and it amuses me to
wonder if any of them will ever turn into real people.

"Oh, my dear love, you are so far, far off. I want you here, here again
with me, happy that you love me, happy that I love you, wanting no other
life than this with your arms round me and your heart beating close to
me. And yet I like to think that you are happy amid your own family, in
the place where your childhood was spent. I love, dear, to dwell on the
thought of your childhood, and fancy I see you now, a beautiful child in
velvet, with a feather in your hat and a toy sword. And I see myself a
child again, playing with this fairy little prince in the meadows. How
beautiful if we were children like that! Impossible does it seem? Yet is
anything impossible in this enchanted world?

"Think of me, dearest, with the deepest and truest love of your heart,
as I am thinking of you every moment of this wonderful life."

And another time: "It is strange to feel how everything is transformed
since you came into my life and made me understand what this great
happiness is. I laugh gaily at nothing; yet tears come into my eyes
quickly at unhappiness or suffering. It seems as if I were born to love
you with a yearning and a passion that sometimes frighten me, yet which
I would rather die than live without. When I first loved you, I did not
know that this would come, that I should not be able to imagine it to be
otherwise. The thought is frightful; indeed, if anything were to happen
to change the present, I think my heart would give one great, great
throb, and all would be over. I draw my breath hard at the thought;
there is a deep pain at my breast; my teeth are set. But how morbid I am
to-day! how ungrateful for this splendid gift of your love that has been
bestowed upon me! But somehow I feel frightened; I don't believe that
anybody will be al