“Oh don’t think that I don’t see.  The things it would mean giving up.  The wrench.  And, for what?—­your friends would say.  At times I wonder how I can—­ask it, hope for it.  Then there lives for me again your wonderful face as it was when you lifted it to me that first time. You—­and I grow bold again.

“I don’t say you wouldn’t suffer.  I don’t say there wouldn’t be hurts, big hurts brought by the little things arising from lives differently lived.  I know there would be times of longing for things gone.  For the sunny paths.  For it couldn’t be all sunny paths with me, Katie.  Those years in the dark will always throw their shadow.

“Then, how dare I?  Loving you—­laughing, splendid you—­how can I?

“Because I believe that you love me.  Remembering that light in your eyes, knowing you, I dare believe that the hurts would be less than the hurt of being spared those hurts.

“I can hear your friends denouncing me.  Hear their withering arguments, and I’ll own that at times they do wither.  But, Katie, I just can’t seem to stay withered!

“You’re such an upsetting person, dear Katie.  To both heart and philosophy.  It’s not possible to hate a world that Katie’s in.  World that didn’t spoil Katie.  And if there are many of the you—­oh no other real you!—­but many who, awakened, can fight as you can fight and love as you can love—­wouldn’t it be a joke on us revolutionists if we were cheated out of our revolution just by the love in the hearts of the Katies?

“Well, nobody would be so happy in that joke as would the defrauded revolutionists!

“You make me wonder, Katie, if perhaps it isn’t less the vision than the visioning.  Less the thing seen than that thing of striving to see.  Make me feel the narrowness in scorning the trying to see just because not agreeing with the thing seen.  Sometimes I have a new vision of the world.  Vision of a world visioning.  Of the vision counting less than the visioning.

“Those moments of glow bear me to you.  Persuade me that our visions must be visioned together.

“Life’s all empty without you.  The radiance is not there.  In these days light comes only through dreams, and so I dream dreams and see visions.

“Dreams of us—­visions of the years we’d meet together.  And you are not bowed and broken in those visions, Katie.  You’re very strong and buoyant—­and always eager for life—­and always tender.  No, not always tender.  Sometimes fighting!  Telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about.  It’s a splendid picture of Katie fighting—­eyes shining, cheeks red.

“And then at the very height of her scorn, Katie happens to think of something funny.  And she says the something funny in her inimitable way.  Then she laughs, and after her laugh she’s tender again, and says she loves me, though still maintaining I didn’t know what I was talking about!