me, of course; such beings can only find their homes in hearts.  All material luxuries, all the arrangements of society, are mere conveniences to them.

’This thought, all whose bearings I did not, indeed, understand, affected me sometimes with sadness, sometimes with pride.  I mourned that I never should have a thorough experience of life, never know the full riches of my being; I was proud that I was to test myself in the sternest way, that I was always to return to myself, to be my own priest, pupil, parent, child, husband, and wife.  All this I did not understand as I do now; but this destiny of the thinker, and (shall I dare to say it?) of the poetic priestess, sibylline, dwelling in the cave, or amid the Lybian sands, lay yet enfolded in my mind.  Accordingly, I did not look on any of the persons, brought into relation with me, with common womanly eyes.

’Yet, as my character is, after all, still more feminine than masculine, it would sometimes happen that I put more emotion into a state than I myself knew.  I really was capable or attachment, though it never seemed so till the hour of separation.  And if a connexion was torn up by the roots, the soil of my existence showed an unsightly wound, which long refused to clothe itself in verdure.

’With regard to yourself, I was to you all that I wished to be.  I knew that I reigned in your thoughts in my own way.  And I also lived with you more truly and freely than with any other person.  We were truly friends, but it was not friends as men are friends to one another, or as brother and sister.  There was, also, that pleasure, which may, perhaps, be termed conjugal, of finding oneself in an alien nature.  Is there any tinge of love in this?  Possibly!  At least, in comparing it with my relation to—­, I find that was strictly fraternal.  I valued him for himself.  I did not care for an influence over him, and was perfectly willing to have one or fifty rivals in his heart. * *

* * ’I think I may say, I never loved.  I but see my possible life reflected on the clouds.  As in a glass darkly, I have seen what I might feel as child, wife, mother, but I have never really approached the close relations of life.  A sister I have truly been to many,—­a brother to more,—­a fostering nurse to, oh how many!  The bridal hour of many a spirit, when first it was wed, I have shared, but said adieu before the wine was poured out at the banquet.  And there is one I always love in my poetic hour, as the lily looks up to the star from amid the waters; and another whom I visit as the bee visits the flower, when I crave sympathy.  Yet those who live would scarcely consider that I am among the living,—­and I am isolated, as you say.

’My dear—­, all is well; all has helped me to decipher the great poem of the universe.  I can hardly describe to you the happiness which floods my solitary hours.