Truly, Beloved, if I am happy, it is because I am also your most patiently loving.

R.

Beloved:  The certainty which I have now that you love me so fills all my thoughts, I cannot understand you being in any doubt on your side.  What must I do that I do not do, to show gladness when we meet and sorrow when we have to part?  I am sure that I make no pretense or disguise, except that I do not stand and wring my hands before all the world, and cry “Don’t go!”—­which has sometimes been in my mind, to be kept not said!

Indeed, I think so much of you, my dear, that I believe some day, if you do your part, you will only have to look up from your books to find me standing.  If you did, would you still be in doubt whether I loved you?

Oh, if any apparition of me ever goes to you, all my thoughts will surely look truthfully out of its eyes; and even you will read what is there at last!

Beloved, I kiss your blind eyes, and love them the better for all their unreadiness to see that I am already their slave.  Not a day now but I think I may see you again:  I am in a golden uncertainty from hour to hour.

I love you:  you love me:  a mist of blessing swims over my eyes as I write the words, till they become one and the same thing:  I can no longer divide their meaning in my mind.  Amen:  there is no need that I should.

S.

Beloved:  I have not written to you for quite a long time:  ah, I could not.  I have nothing now to say!  I think I could very easily die of this great happiness, so certainly do you love me!  Just a breath more of it and I should be gone.

Good-by, dearest, and good-by, and good-by!  If you want letters from me now, you must ask for them!  That the earth contains us both, and that we love each other, is about all that I have mind enough to take in.  I do not think I can love you more than I do:  you are no longer my dream but my great waking thought.  I am waiting for no blue-moonrise now:  my heart has not a wish which you do not fulfill.  I owe you my whole life, and for any good to you must pay it out to the last farthing, and still feel myself your debtor.

Oh, Beloved, I am most poor and most rich when I think of your love.  Good-night; I can never let thought of you go!

* * * * *

Beloved:  These are almost all of them, but not quite; a few here and there have cried to be taken out, saying they were still too shy to be looked at.  I can’t argue with them:  they know their own minds best; and you know mine.

See what a dignified historic name I have given this letter-box, or chatterbox, or whatever you like to call it.  But “Resurrection Pie” is my name for it.  Don’t eat too much of it, prays your loving.

LETTER XXIII.