“Schweitzerhof, Lucerne,
“July 3rd.
“At last! I was so glad to get your letter this morning. First, I am going to thank you from my heart for telling me everything, and please remember that I can never be bored by anything that concerns you. Just believe that, and you will trust me, and I may be able to help you with my sympathy at any rate. Dear, I do sympathise, and it is as if the trouble were my own. I can dimly guess what a terrible loss you have had, and I know that your relationship with him was a perfect one. I am so sorry that the letters I have written since I left London have been so selfish and full of my own feelings, while you are in such grief; forgive them. I should love to hear that the knowledge of my sympathy and care is something to you. I need not tell you that I would spare no trouble and no thought if I could help you in the smallest degree, or if I could save you one ounce of care or pain. I know the hardness of it appals you. Can I say or do anything to make you happier?
“I have just been reading for the tenth time ‘Andrea del Sarto.’ It is wonderful; but how he longed for a soul in his wife, and yet he loved her for her beauty, and she—‘again the cousin’s whistle.’ It is so sad, but how could she love him when she did not understand him? And I suppose it bored her to sit by the window with him while he talked to her, and all the time she was listening for the cousin’s whistle, and wishing her husband would begin to paint again. Surely ‘a man’s reach does always exceed his grasp.’ If it did not, we should not want a Heaven at all. Browning knew things, didn’t he?
“We are not coming back for some weeks yet, and it makes me sad, for I long to hear your voice again. I love your voice.—
“Yours,
“C. H. W.”
A course of these letters was very comforting. To be necessary to someone is what many women are obliged to be, instead of being loved.
The days were long and full of pain. She did not grow accustomed to it. The wound was as open and sore as at first. It was a relief to be alone, and to be allowed to be sorrowful. There was no peace, no joy anywhere.