I wonder whether it is my love for you that makes me believe? I cling to you, as a mother might cling to her child; I cling to you as the embodiment, the promise, of all I will ever find true in life. I look to live in you, to fulfil all my possibilities in you, and if you die or forsake me, all my hope is gone, and I am dead. This is a letter in which I have no scorn or doubt, or ridicule of myself, as formerly.
And then you ask me, “Can a girl brought up in gentleness and sweetness, and innocence of life and of pain, can she say things, feel things like these?” It is the gentleness and sweetness and innocence that are galling to me. I can tolerate no more of them. They have warped me, they have given me no chance. But I have had some pain in my life, and since I have known you I have known more about pain and what it brings, and leaves.—And now I am feeling ill, and I cannot control that. Oh, God!
XIII. Dearest Corydon:
I have a chance to finish the first part of my book to-day, and save myself from Hades; and here I am writing to you—just a line. (Of course it turned out to be six pages!)
Your last letter was very noble; I can only say to you, that the treatment which makes you upbraid me is not done for my sake; that the life which I live is not lived for my sake. You say perhaps you are better than I; it is very possible—I often think so myself; but that is nothing to the point. I should be very wretched if I sat down to think what I am. Oblige me by being better than my ideal—if you can! You must understand, dearest, that behind all that I am doing, there is truth to the soul; and that truth to the soul is love, and the only love. I am seeking for nothing but the privilege of treating you as myself; and rest assured, that if I treat you any differently it will be better than I treat myself! There is no peril in our life except that!
Some day you will understand that I can sometimes feel about myself that I am utterly hateful, utterly false, utterly shallow and bad; and that to get away from myself would be all that I desire in life. I cannot imagine my having such opinion of you; but some dissatisfaction—just a little—I may have. Only let us love perfection, you and I, with all our souls, and I think our love for each other may safely be allowed to take care of itself. Remember the two ships in Clough’s poem, which parted, but sailed by the compass, and reached the same port.
I shall spend no more time comforting you about this.
And dear Corydon, when you are angry at my doubting your power, and say that I do not know you, I can only reply—Why of course I don’t, and neither do you. You find your own self out little by little—why get angry with me because I don’t know it until you tell me? You are a grown woman compared to what you were three months ago; and this character that you ask me to know—well, it takes years of hard labor to prove a character.
XIV. Dearest Corydon:
Do you ever realize how much faith in you I have? As utterly different is your whole life, as if you had been in another world; and through all the wilderness that I have travelled, I hope to drag you. But I cannot carry you, or take you; I must trust in the frenzy of your grip upon me. There is nothing else you could have that I would trust. You might be wonderfully clever and wonderfully wise—and I could do nothing with you. Do you remember Beethoven’s saying, that he would like to take a certain woman, if he had time, and marry her and break her heart, so that she might be able to sing?