Chapter LXII: Letter LXII

So I have seen you, Beloved, again, after fearing that I never should. A day's absence from home has given me this great fortune.

The pain of it was less than it might have been, since our looks did not meet. To have seen your eyes shut out their recognition of me would have hurt me too much: I must have cried out against such a judgment. But you passed by the window without knowing, your face not raised: so little changed, yet you have been ill. Arthur tells me everything: he knows I must have any word of you that goes begging.

Oh, I hope you are altogether better, happier! An illness helps some people: the worst of their sorrow goes with the health that breaks down under it; and they come out purged into a clearer air, and are made whole for a fresh trial of life.

I hear that you are going quite away; and my eyes bless this chance to have embraced you once again. Your face is the kindest I have ever seen: even your silence, while I looked at you, seemed a grace instead of a cruelty. What kindness, I say to myself, even if it be mistaken kindness, must have sealed those dear lips not to tell me of my unworth!

Oh, if I could see once into the brain of it all! No one but myself knows how good you are: how can I, then, be so unworthy of you? Did you think I would not surrender to anything you fixed, that you severed us so completely, not even allowing us to meet, and giving me no way to come back to you though I might come to be all that you wished? Ah, dear face, how hungry you have made me!--the more that I think you are not yet so happy as I could wish,--as I could make you,--I say it foolishly:--yet if you would trust me, I am sure.

Oh, how tired loving you now makes me! physically I grow weary with the ache to have you in my arms. And I dream, I dream always, the shadows of former kindness that never grow warm enough to clasp me before I wake.--Yours, dearest, waking or sleeping.