Reward me some day by reading what is here. I kiss, because of you, this paper which I am too tired to fill any more.
Love, nothing but love! Into every one of these dead words my heart has been beating, trying to lay down its life and reach to you.
LETTER LXXX.
A secret, dearest, that will be no secret soon: before I am done with twenty-three I shall have passed my age. Beloved, it hurts me more than I can say that the news of it should come to you from anyone but me: for this, though I write it, is already a dead letter, lost like a predestined soul even in the pains that gave it birth. Yes, it does pain me, frightens me even, that I must die all by myself, and feeling still so young. I thought I should look forward to it, but I do not; no, no, I would give much to put it off for a time, until I could know what it will mean for me as regards you. Oh, if you only knew and cared, what wild comfort I might have in the knowledge! It seems strange that if I were going away from the chance of a perfect life with you I should feel it with less pain than I feel this. The dust and the ashes of life are all that I have to let fall: and it is bitterness itself to part with them.
How we grow to love sorrow! Joy is never so much a possession—it goes over us, incloses us like air or sunlight; but sorrow goes into us and becomes part of our flesh and bone. So that I, holding up my hand to the sunshine, see sorrow red and transparent like stained glass between me and the light of day, sorrow that has become inseparably mine, and is the very life I am wishing to keep!
Dearest, will the world be more bearable to you when I am out of it? It is selfish of me not to wish so, since I can satisfy you in this so soon! Every day I will try to make it my wish: or wish that it may be so when the event comes—not a day before. Till then let it be more bearable that I am still alive: grant me, dearest, that one little grace while I live!
Bearable! My sorrow is bearable, I suppose, because I do bear it from day to day: otherwise I would declare it not to be. Don't suffer as I do, dearest, unless that will comfort you.
One thing is strange, but I feel quite certain of it: when I heard that I carried death about in me, scarcely an arm's-length away, I thought quickly to myself that it was not the solution of the mystery. Others might have thought that it was: that because I was to die so soon, therefore I was not fit to be your wife. But I know it was not that. I know that whatever hopes death in me put an end to, you would have married me and loved me patiently till I released you, as I am to so soon.