I am going to get up again to-day, dear, having something to do that is just a little important—to give you this manuscript book, in which I have been writing every day (or rather every night since you found me in London.)
You will see what it is, and why it was written, so I'll say no more on that subject.
I am afraid you'll find it very egotistical, being mainly about myself; but I seem to have been looking into my soul all the time, and when one does that, and gets down to the deep places, one meets all other souls there, so perhaps I have been writing the lives of some women as well.
I once thought I could write a real book (you'll see what vain and foolish things I thought, especially in my darker moments) to show what a woman's life may be when, from any cause whatsoever, she is denied the right God gave her of choosing the best for herself and her children.
There is a dream lying somewhere there, dear, which is stirring the slumber of mankind, but the awakening will not be in my time certainly, and perhaps not even in Girlie's.
And yet, why not?
Do you know, dearest, what it was in your wonderful book which thrilled me most? It was your description of the giant iceberg you passed in the Antarctic Ocean—five hundred feet above the surface of the sea and therefore five hundred below it, going steadily on and on, against all the force of tempestuous wind and wave, by power of the current underneath.
Isn't the movement of all great things in life like that, dearest? So perhaps the world will be a better place for Girlie than it has been for me. And in any case, I shall always feel that, after all and in spite of everything, it has been glorious to be a woman.
And now, my own darling, though we are only to be separated for a little while, I want to write what I should like to say when I part from you to-morrow if I did not know that something in my throat would choke me.