e answer to
anything except too deep down in the heart for even the pearl-divers?
But understand ... what you do not quite ... that I did not mistake
you as far even as you say here and even 'for a moment.' I did not
write any of that letter in a 'doubt' of you--not a word.... I was
simply looking back in it on my own states of feeling, ... looking
back from that point of your praise to what was better ... (or I
should not have looked back)--and so coming to tell you, by a natural
association, how the completely opposite point to that of any praise
was the one which struck me first and most, viz. the no-reason of your
reasoning ... acknowledged to be yours. Of course I acknowledge it to
be yours, ... that high reason of no reason--I acknowledged it to be
yours (didn't I?) in acknowledging that it made an impression on me.
And then, referring to the traditions of my experience such as I told
them to you, I meant, so, farther to acknowledge that I would rather
be cared for in _that_ unreasonable way, than for the best reason in
the world. But all _that_ was history and philosophy simply--was it
not?--and not _doubt of you_.

The truth is ... since we really are talking truths in this world ...
that I never have doubted you--ah, you _know_!--I felt from the
beginning so sure of the nobility and integrity in you that I would
have trusted you to make a path for my soul--_that_, you _know_. I
felt certain that you believed of yourself every word you spoke or
wrote--and you must not blame me if I thought besides sometimes (it
was the extent of my thought) that you were self-deceived as to the
nature of your own feelings. If you could turn over every page of my
heart like the pages of a book, you would see nothing there offensive
to the least of your feelings ... not even to the outside fringes of
your man's vanity ... should you have any vanity like a man; which I
_do_ doubt. I never wronged you in the least of things--never ... I
thank God for it. But 'self-deceived,' it was so easy for you to be:
see how on every side and day by day, men are--and women too--in this
sort of feelings. 'Self-deceived,' it was so possible for you to be,
and while I thought it possible, could I help thinking it _best_ for
you that it should be so--and was it not right in me to persist in
thinking it possible? It was my reverence for you that made me
persist! What was _I_ that I should think otherwise? I had been shut
up here too long face to fac