For the rest, claiming nothing from you, giving you nothing but the services for which you render me a full equivalent, I grant you, as far as I have a right to do so, the largest liberty of action.  We are only jealous of those we love:  therefore all women will be as free to you as they have hitherto been or their will accords, save that you have debarred yourself for a time from offering any one of them marriage.  I hope to be so little trouble to you, and so serviceable to you in many ways, that you shall realize to the full that if an unloving union could be so much more comfortable than a bachelor’s life, a life passed with a loving and beloved wife would be bliss indeed, and so when my life has ended you will not be sorry that I stopped in your path a few years.  For I shall not trouble you very long.  I am a poor little perfumeless flower, having no sweetness or beauty with which to charm the eye or senses, only fit to grow among the kitchen herbs—­rue and thyme, and such old-fashioned things.  But I need a great deal of sunshine, spite of my plainness, to keep life in me.  And now that all the heat and passion of love, all the sunny hopes and glow of friendship, have left me, I shall just fade and fade until some day you will find the poor little weed has dropped to earth for ever.

I am but two years younger than yourself, and women, especially women with a great sorrow, age cruelly fast.  I look and feel older than I am—­you wear your years like a crown, and appear younger than you are.  I have made my little venture on life’s ocean—­made and failed:  my barque, freighted with a few cherished hopes, has been wrecked, and though I have reached a rock to which I can cling for a time, yet I am terribly hurt, the waves have buffeted me cruelly, and in a little while I shall let go my hold and float out—­out into the ocean of eternity.  Ah! there is comfort after all:  life is hard, but afterward there is peace and rest!

I am nearly through this long tirade.  Pardon its length:  it is my first, and shall be my last, heart-outpouring to you; and if it make you comprehend me, I shall not have written or you have read in vain.

Your income will not support the establishment your position in society would require if we went to housekeeping; besides, you would feel as if you must then be more stationary, more in your own home, than is at present your custom, therefore in a degree in bondage.  And a hotel-life is very expensive and very cheerless.  You have kindly said you intended dividing your income with me, giving me half.  At first I was indignant at the idea, but now I think I see that it will be in every way the best.  One of my cousins has been occupying a very elegantly-appointed suite of rooms on Twenty-fourth street.  Harry writes me he is going very suddenly to Europe.  His rooms will of course be vacant:  he talks of renting them furnished.  I have thought, if you would not object to it, we might take them off his hands.