I talk to you like this, beloved, because you will never know. There are other days when your glance, as you look at me, is like a blue flower that blossoms in the sacred garden of dreams, but only because you are happy in yourself, only because of that. You have had some pleasant experience, or built up some new hope.... I think, then, that you have derived strength from the glance that is life to you, as yours is my own life’s fountain.

At those times your glance flashes towards me, and a smile comes and goes on your lips. It comes from the foundation of your being, and is astonished at itself. At those times your figure is upright and elastic, and if you walk across a room you move with a rhythm that touches me like a song.

But, beloved ... you have yet another, a third look ... and this I recall when it grows dark. I fear it the most and love it the most. It’s when you realise I am a woman ... suddenly, as if a mask fell from my face, you realise that I am a woman, and not only a woman, but a woman meant for you. And the smile that then encloses me like a snare has not its origin in your consciousness and knowledge of my love, but its origin is in me because I am a woman. And then, of course, because in the kindness of your heart you are glad to give me the pleasure of remembering that I am a woman, your eyes fill with a misty twilight, and into this twilight I sink as into an everlasting night.

I feel your arm supporting my neck, your cheek’s melancholy pressure. Shuddering we stand leaning against each other, like two pines of the forest, that for a short space a hurricane of storm wind has flung together only to separate them again.

All the time your smile is cold and meditative, and your glance is extinguished like a lamp that has consumed its last drop of oil. My poor heart tells me the reason—you are wondering at yourself for giving way to a mood which means so little to you.

But when, saddened, I try to move away, you again offer me your mouth as a friendly almsgiving.... The letter, the barren letter I hold it to my heart. I leave my house and go into the deepest part of the wood till I find a place solitary enough to lie down in. The letter has filled me with a joy that resembles the pungent fragrance of the pine needles carpeting the ground.

I open my letter, contemplate the two unwritten sides, and read once more the written sheets.... I begin a deliberate juggle with the words; I transpose them over and over again, read each letter separately, as if there were some sweet secret hidden in each, and a caress in every stroke of the pen. I can’t help thinking there must be somewhere between the lines one single little word all for myself, that concerns me only.

Yet my joy goes down with the sun; the leaves cease to glow, and the darkness gathers in, and I sit with nothing but despondency in my lap.

Beloved, beloved! how kind you are!

I have lain awake all night with these words ringing in my head like a song through the darkness. How kind you are!