"But I want to tell you of a few of the good things. You would not believe what that work in the laboratory has done for me. It has given me a new understanding of colour—new sense of it, new power with eye and hand, a better sense of values. Would you have thought of that? And do you not see the reasons for my being glad?
"What I have done so far is but leading up to what I am going to do. That is so vital that it must not be done too quickly. I must get my hand in, gain what there is to be gained here, that the work I am going to do for Karl may have the benefit of it all. But I have made innumerable sketches, and it is growing all the time. There need be no fear of my losing it. I could no more lose it than I could lose my own soul. It grows as I grow. Sometimes I think I should wait ten years—but I shall not.
"Yes, the critics like the picture of which you speak. Of course I am painting all the time—other things—various things. But it all seems like practice work to me—a mere getting ready."
And then, after a long time, this:—"This is my birthday;—a day linked more closely than I could ever tell with Karl, our life and work and love. If I had looked forward from one happy birthday I had and seen what was ahead—how it would be with me now—I never could have gone on. We go on by not knowing what is waiting for us, and day by day we bear what we would have said, looking ahead, we never could endure—and that is human life.
"I have been so lonely to-day that I must write this little word to one who will understand. I turn to you as one close to us in those dear days, one who cared for and appreciated Karl, understood something of the kind of love that was ours. Doctor—it was so wonderful! So wonderful that it seems to me sometimes the universe must have existed through the centuries just that our love might be born. I think of it as the one perfect flower of creation.
"I want you to know that I have come to see the worth—pricelessness—of my memories. Karl's love for me lights up my life with a glory nothing can ever take away. I think we do not have even our memories until we have earned them. I have tried to come back to my own, to take my place. I am trying to be of that great harmony of the world in which Karl and I believed, and as my spirit turns from discord and seeks harmony, I am given my memories, the memories of those many perfect days, and I am never too lonely nor too desolate to thank God that to me was left the scent of the roses.
"Oh, Doctor—where is he now? Do you ever think of all that? No one who has ever loved and lost can remain secure in his materialism. I begin to see that the beautiful thoughts, the poems, of immortality, eternity, of its all coming right, have sprung from the lonely hearts of great lovers. For they would not have it any other way—they could only endure it by having it so, and, ah, Doctor—far greater than any proof of science or logic, is there not proof in this? Lifting up their hearts in hours of desolation were not the men and women born for great loves and great sorrows granted a vision of the truth?
"We do not know. None of them know. We hope and wait and long for the years to tell us the truth. And while we wait and hope, we work, and try to make our lives that which is worthy our love. That endeavour, and that alone, makes life bearable."
After a year of silence he received this letter: "Doctor, it is finished. I will not tell you the things they are saying of it here, for you will read it in the papers. The papers here are full of it; I think I have never seen so much about any picture.
"But it is more important that I tell you this: They are seeing it, even now, as I intended it should be seen—a work of love, a memorial, an endeavour to make it right for him. I have cared more for what the scientific people, Karl's own kind, have said of it, than the artists. They claim it as their own, say they are going to have it, get it some way,—must have it. Do you not see how that means the fulfillment of my desire?