“There is something delirious in this—something of the nameless quantity.
“It is old grief and woe to live nineteen years and to remember no person ever to have been kind. But what is it—do you think?—at the end of nineteen years, to come at last upon one who is wonderfully, beautifully kind!
“Those persons who have had some one always to be kind to them can never remotely imagine how this feels.
“Sometimes in these spring days when I walk miles down into the country to the little wet gulch of the sweet-flags, I wonder why it is that this thing does not make me happy. ‘She is wonderfully, beautifully kind,’ I say to myself—‘and she is the anemone lady. She is wondrously kind, and though she’s gone, nothing can ever change that.’
“But I am not happy.
“Oh, my one friend—what is the matter with me? What is this feeling? Why am I not happy?
“But how can you know?
“You are beautiful.
“I am a small, vile creature.
“Always I awake to this fact when I think of the anemone lady.