Dear God, how I have spent the years of my life! like an imbecile! But you—if you take me, I shall go mad—I shall love you like a tigress! I shall implore you to invent any way that will enable me to realize life! Oh, if you take me, how madly I shall love you! I fancy myself seeing you now, and I don't know what I should do—I love you so dreadfully! I think of you, and everything about you seems so wondrously beautiful to me!
I almost have a feeling that I have no right to love you so much. Oh, tell me, do you want me to love you as I can ? Already you seem part of me, mine—mine! And it is wonderful how you help me.
XXIV
THYRSIS :
I spent the whole day in the park without a bite to eat, because I did not want to take the trouble to come home after it, and I only had five cents. I have tried, oh, tried to control myself and make myself saner. I am seized with occasional fits of the horrors, and of wild cravings for you, until I could scream. It is so unbearable, and I almost want to die. Oh, but I do not want to die! My imagination has become so fevered in the last few days—if I do not see you soon, I know not what will become of me!
I have never loved you so wildly—though I have always longed for you. I sometimes feel now as if my brain were utterly wrecked. I know not what is the matter; I gasp, when I think of you. I am convinced of heaven and hell almost in the same breath—experience each in rapid succession. One touch of your hand and one look, I think would cure me. I seem as if in
a thunder-storm—pitchy blackness with flashes of light —and in the flashes I see you, my beloved!
XXV
THYRSIS :
I am atrociously weary of being able to depend upon myself not at all; but oh, how marvellously sweet and good you are to me! I shall never be able to pay you for your help!
Dear Heaven, what a cup of bitterness I have drunk, since I last saw you! Dearest, you have really torn me to pieces, unwittingly. But now I am healed, and I may go on in your blessed sight, with my terrors gone forever.
And then I actually wonder if you have an earthly form! It will be very strange to see you and touch you, I sometimes wake up with a start at the thought of it!
XXVI
THYRSIS :
Here I am, the most restless and miserable and uncomfortable and pining of creatures—a very Dido! Are you satisfied, now that you have made it almost impossible for me to put my mind on anything but you, you? I spend hours reading one page of my book.
I was reading peaceably just now, and I suddenly thought how I would feel if I saw you coming in at the door. I started and could hardly believe that I will really see you—in something besides visions. When night comes I usually get fidgety, and can hardly realize I do not need to worry over phantoms. Then I go on with "Classicism and Romanticism in Music," and I
think of you—and read a line and think of you! You see, it doesn't do for me to be too intense, for I just devour myself, and that is all. My only idea of a vent is to knock my head against something.
I suppose it is the inevitable result of caring for someone you cannot see. Here I might be studying now, but what do I do ? I go around seeking rest—and I write you a dozen times a day, and use up all the stamps in the house.
Oh well, I dare say if you washed me to love you, you have accomplished your purpose most ^successfully. There is nothing in life but you, and to suddenly acquire a new self is most startling, and something hard to believe. Thyrsis, I simply cannot realize that I may go to you and find peace and security.
XXVII
MY DEAREST CORYDON:
I have just a few words to say. I have two weeks left in which to shake off my shoulders the fearful animal that has been tearing me. For just three weeks to-day, not a line written!
The task seems almost beyond my powers. God, will people ever know how I have worked over this book!
But unless you develop some new doubt, or I persist in writing letters, I ought to get it done now. I shall see you as soon as I have finished, and meantime I shall write no letters.
XXVIII DEAR THYRSIS:
I would give a great deal to let you know how I have struggled and suffered.
I have had almost more than I could bear—the more horrible because the more unreasonable. You must know it. If it disturbs you, please put the letter away until a favorable time. I account my trouble greatly physical— I have never been in such a nervous state. The murky despair that has come over me—that I have writhed and struggled in, as in the clutches of some fiend! It seems to me I have experienced every torment of each successive stage of Dante's Inferno. I know what is the emotion of a soul in all the bloom and hope of youth, condemned to die.
I woke up in the middle of the night last night—and felt as if a monster sat by to throw a black cloth over me and smother me. I got up and shook myself, and my heart was beating violently.
I managed to get myself free. This morning I am better. God in Heaven only knows—I would rather be torn limb from limb, yes, honestly, than endure the blackness of soul that I have had through all these years of strife and failure by myself.
XXIX
DEAREST THYRSIS :
Perhaps if I have written to you a few words, I shall be able to put my mind on study—as so far I have not done. I actually to-night have been indulging in all sorts of romantic moods about you. I felt in a singing mood, and when I came up from dinner I put on a beautiful dress, just for fun, and I looked quite radiant. I dreamed of you, and imagined that you were at my feet, in true Romeo fashion—and I was your Juliet. I imagined—I couldn't help thinking of this, and I knew I ought to be doing something else! Oh, but how
I want a poor taste of joy! You were my Romeo tonight—you were beautiful and young and loving; and well, I had one dream of youth and happiness before my miseries begin.
I have felt that we were very near to each other lately. You have shown me the tenderness of your heart, and I love you quite rapturously. I love your goodness, your sympathy—perhaps when I see you I can tell vou!
mi
XXX
DEAREST THYRSIS :
I received a postal just now, saying that you were coming soon. I had my usual queer faintness. It was like receiving word from the dead—it seemed such centuries—aeons—since I heard from you! I send you this batch of notes I have written you at various times, a sort of mental itinerary, for my mind has traveled into all sorts of queer places, back and forth. I tell you that without your continual influence, I am lost in doubt and uncertainty. Please try to understand these notes and my fits of love and fear.
XXXI
DEAR THYRSIS:
I am in one of my cast-iron moods this morning— in a fighting mood, I do not care with whom or what. You, even you, have not altogether understood me— you have often given me a dog's portion. I have been a slave, a cowering kitten before you, and you (unwittingly I know) have done much to destroy all my courage and hope and love—by what you call making me aware of your higher self. Fortunately I k?ww
what your higher self is, quite as well as you do, if not a little better—and I know that it is the self that most strengthens my love and courage, the self that most fills me with life. I have a right to life as well as you, and a right to the love in you that most inspires me. I feel I am capable of judging this, in spite of all my lack of education, and my inability to follow you in your intellectual life.