"Surely it is because of this that I now hate London so! It keeps this knowledge of separation—this sense of dreary waiting—from burning into your heart, as it does into mine!
"There you are kept too busy to think—but here I can do nothing else!—Or perhaps I am quite wrong, and it is not a matter of London and Lancashire, after all, but the more primal one of your being a man, and my being a woman! Do I love the more? I wonder? And yet, I don't think that I care much! I am willing to love more abjectly than any woman ever loved before—if you care for me just a little in return."
(I always felt very wise and maternal at this point.)
"You were an awful goose, Lady Frances!" I said. "This is a mistake that I have never made!"
"Still, I am tormented by thoughts of you in London," the letter kept on. "I think of you—there—as a lion. It presses down upon me, this recollection that you are James Christie, the great artist, and the only release from the torture is when I go alone into the library and sit down before the fire. The two chairs are there—those two that were there that day—and then I can forget about the lion. 'Jim—Jim!' I whisper—'just my lover!'
"Then your face comes—it has to come, or I could never be good! Your rugged face that speaks of great forests which have been your home—the fierce young freedom which has nurtured you—and the glorious uplift you have achieved above all that is small and weak!
"You have asked me a thousand times why I love you, but I have never known what to say—because I love you for so many things—until now, when I have nothing but memories—and the ever-present sight of your absent face. And now I don't know why I love you, but I know what I love best about you. Shall I tell you—though of course you know already! It is not your talent—wonderful as it is—for there have been other artists; nor your terrible charm with its power to lure women away from duty—for England is full of fascinating men; nor your sweetness—and I think the first time I saw you smile I sounded the depths of this—it is not any of these, dear heart! Not any of these! I love best the strength of you which you use to control the charm—the untamed force of your personality which makes your talent seem just an incident—and the big, big virility of you!
"Do you think for a moment that you look like an artist? Half-civilized you? Why, you are a woodsman, dear love—but not a hunter! You could never kill living things for the joy of seeing them die!
"You look as if you had spent all your life in the woods, doing hard tasks patiently—a woodcutter, or a charcoal burner! Ah, a charcoal burner! A man who has had to grip life with bared hands and wrest his bread from grudging circumstances. This is what you are, Jim, to my heart's eyes. You are a primal creature—simple-souled, great-bodied, and your mind is given over to naked truth.
"But all the time you are a famous artist—and London's idol! Your studio in St. James's Street is the lounging-place for curled darlings! The hardest task that your hands perform is over the ugly features of a fat duchess!—How can you, Jim? Why don't you come away? You are a man first, an artist afterward—and it is the man that I love!