and learn nothing.  But you would learn to feel only too much.  I wish that your capacity for feeling were less; but then you would not be yourself, your present self I mean, for you have changed even since I have known you.  Every week you seemed to become more gentle.  You thought me rough and gruff at parting, little comrade:  I meant to be so.  If you had only known, there was a whole world of tenderness for you in my heart.  I could not trust myself to be tender to you; you would have guessed my secret.  And I wanted you to go away undisturbed.  You do not feel things lightly, and it was best for you that you should harden your heart against me.

“If you could harden your heart against me.  But I am not sure about that.  I believe that . . .  Ah, well, I’m a foolish fellow; but some day, dear, I’ll tell you what I think . . .  I have treasured many of your sayings in my memory.  I can never be as though I had never known you.  Many of your words I have repeated to myself afterwards until they seemed to represent my own thoughts.  I specially remember what you said about God having made us lonely, so that we might be obliged to turn to him.  For we are all lonely, though some of us not quite so much as others.  You yourself spoke often of being lonely.  Oh, my own little one!  Your loneliness is nothing compared to mine.  How often I could have told you that.

“I have never seen any of your work, but I think you have now something to say to others, and that you will say it well.  And if you have the courage to be simple when it comes to the point, you will succeed.  And I believe you will have the courage, I believe everything of you.

“But whatever you do or do not, you will always be the same to me:  my own little one, my very own.  I have been waiting all my life for you; and I have given you my heart entire.  If you only knew that, you could not call yourself lonely any more.  If any one was ever loved, it is you, dear heart.

“Do you remember how those peasants at the Gasthaus thought we were betrothed?  I thought that might annoy you; and though I was relieved at the time, still, later on, I wished you had been annoyed.  That would have shown that you were not indifferent.  From that time my love for you grew apace.  You must not mind me telling you so often; I must go on telling you.  Just think, dear, this is the first love-letter I have ever written:  and every word of love is a whole world of love.  I shall never call my life a failure now.  I may have failed in everything else, but not in loving.  Oh, little one, it can’t be that I am not to be with you, and not to have you for my own!  And yet how can that be?  It is not I who may hold you in my arms.  Some strong man must love and wrap you round with tenderness and softness.  You little independent child, in spite of all your wonderful views and theories, you will soon be glad to lean on some one for comfort and sympathy.  And then perhaps that troubled little spirit of yours may find its rest.  Would to God I were that strong man!