Your images hunt in couples, and it won't do, save in the Psalms. Simplicity, simplicity! that must be our aim. That makes a sentence read as if it had stood immemorially, as if it formed an integral part of the Creator's speech when He overlooked His work and found it good. (You see I fall into your trick of repeated images. Indeed, it is one of the queer coincidences of fate that our phrasing should be much alike.) This same simplicity it is which shall make Ruskin a monument of white, like an angel with carven wings, when Sartor Resartus lies howling, with none so poor to patch him. Ah! and by the way—very much by the way—don't be feverish again. Don't take my idle words of last time for more than they are worth. I told you they meant nothing. When will you believe?
Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose
Their nothing is my all. You have declared it. The words lie in my hand. Discourse to a man upon rhetoric, when your own letter says, "You are dear to me"! We will talk this out. We will, I say. If not alone, before them all. Come into the woods with me to-night at nine, and with only the dark for witness you shall swear to me love—or denial.
Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume
Was it a week ago we spoke together there by the rock, and have you changed me so? I told you that night I half thought—I was very sure—I cared, and then I seemed to lose my power of mocking you. Our places are changed. You do not know it, but I no longer command; I am beginning, the real I that sits within me, to obey. Your ways are so sweet, so tender, your truth so single, your chivalry so great! I am learning to lean on your fair service as it were an arm. O, but if I am to love you, make me good! I wish I were what you would have me be. I am not! I am not! How soon will you learn it? They talk about a maiden's mind, a fair white page; mine is all tracked with ugly marks. I am blonde, young, pretty, but I am haggard and yellow within. Not bad, you know, dear; but not the she you should have loved. Full of worldliness, cynicism, incapacity for being deceived; there's not a spontaneous thing about me. Yet, peradventure, my only hope is that I see your beauty and love it. No more of this, so long as we two live. Love me while you can, and believe it is my unhappiness that I have lived too much.
Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose
My lady,—It was a perverse mood that conceived your letter. And if you had no perversity, no pretty whims, where should we all be? On a dead level of discontent. I love the sweet humility of it. Not that I would have you keep to that; it would never befit my sovereign lady. But for an idle moment of a summer's day, 'tis like fooling in masquerade. Why, you are queen of me, and queen of my great heart! (Aye, I do swear with the biggest oaths I know that 'tis a great heart; for otherwise were to do you some despite. Did you not create it? "Let there be love," said you, and straightway my heart was born.) Do people always take it so seriously when other people say they are going to marry? What was that unguarded speech of Mrs. Montrose's:—
"Zoe, Zoe, why didn't you let that boy alone?"
O, I heard it, but I forgive her! She wots not of our kingdom. What should a woman with false hair and fat hands know about the divine foreknowledge of a heart in finding its mate? And my father? Why is he sadder every day? He has not lost me. He had gained you; and he owns you are sweet and blithe and fair beyond compare.
Later: What do you think has happened? I am to go back with you, and my father himself proposed it! I could wake all the echoes in the hills with joy. I shall never walk any more. I shall run and dance. What will your world think of that,—your world of men and women? Even that my father takes it sadly does not move me overmuch, though I wish he saw the joy of being. (How full it is, O, how full! And you have brought me the cup. I will drink carefully, sweetheart, though so greedily. I will not spill a drop.) He said to me, "You must know something of life before you make new ties and take responsibilities. So you must go out into the world. Mrs. Montrose is a good woman. She will be your teacher in social walks, and she will introduce you to some men I knew long ago. I can't give you definite plans. You wouldn't follow them if I did." When I asked him if he would go, too, he said, "No, not yet." It was best for me to cut loose from him for a time.