Chapter LXXXI: Letter LXXXI

Beloved: I woke last night and believed I had your arms round me, and that all storms had gone over me forever. The peace of your love had inclosed me so tremendously that when I was fully awake I began to think that what I held was you dead, and that our reconciliation had come at that great cost.

Something remains real of it all, even now under the full light of day: yet I know you are not dead. Only it leaves me with a hope that at the lesser cost of my own death, when it comes, happiness may break in, and that whichever of us has been the most in poor and needy ignorance will know the truth at last--the truth which is an inseparable need for all hearts that love rightly.

Even now to me the thought of you is a peace passing _all_ understanding. Beloved, Beloved, Beloved, all the greetings I ever gave you gather here, and are hungry to belong to you by a better way than I have ever dreamed. I am yours, till something more than death swallows me up.