But one can jump best from a spring-board:  and how could I jump as far as your arms by letter, if I had not yours to jump from?

So you see they are kept, and my disobedience of you has begun:  and I find disobedience wonderfully sweet.  But then, you gave me a law which you knew I should disobey:—­that is the way the world began.  It is not for nothing that I am a daughter of Eve.

And here is our world in our hands, yours and mine, now in the making.  Which day are the evening and the morning now?  I think it must be the birds’—­and already, with the wings, disobedience has been reached!  Make much of it! the day will come when I shall wish to obey.  There are moments when I feel a wish taking hold of me stronger than I can understand, that you should command me beyond myself—­to things I have not strength or courage for of my own accord.  How close, dearest, when that day comes, my heart will feel itself to yours!  It feels close now:  but it is to your feet I am nearest, as yet.  Lift me!  There, there, Beloved, I kiss you with all my will.  Oh, dear heart, forgive me for being no more than I am:  your freehold to all eternity!

LETTER XI

Oh, Dearest:  I have danced and I have danced till I am tired!  I am dropping with sleep, but I must just touch you and say good-night.  This was our great day of publishing, dearest, ours:  all the world knows it; and all admire your choice!  I was determined they should.  I have been collecting scalps for you to hang at your girdle.  All thought me beautiful:  people who never did so before.  I wanted to say to them, “Am I not beautiful?  I am, am I not?” And it was not for myself I was asking this praise.  Beloved, I was wearing the magic rose—­what you gave me when we parted:  you saying, alas, that you were not to be there.  But you were!  Its leaves have not dropped nor the scent of it faded.  I kiss you out of the heart of it.  Good-night:  come to me in my first dream!

LETTER XII.

Dearest:  It has been such a funny day from post-time onwards:—­ congratulations on the great event are beginning to arrive in envelopes and on wheels.  Some are very kind and dear; and some are not so—­only the ordinary seemliness of polite sniffle-snaffle.  Just after you had gone yesterday, Mrs. ——­ called and was told the news.  Of course she knew of you:  but didn’t think she had ever seen you.  “Probably he passed you at the gates,” I said.  “What?” she went off with a view-hallo; “that well-dressed sort of young fellow in gray, and a mustache, and knowing how to ride?  Met us in the lane. Well, my dear, I do congratulate you!”

And whether it was by the gray suit, or the mustache, or the knowing how to ride that her congratulations were so emphatically secured, I know not!