All this space on the page below is love.  I have no time left to put it into words, or words into it.  You bless my thoughts constantly.—­Believe me, never your thoughtless.

LETTER XXIV.

Dearest:  How, when, and where is there any use wrangling as to which of us loves the other the best ("the better,” I believe, would be the more grammatical phrase in incompetent Queen’s English), and why in that of all things should we pretend to be rivals?  For this at least seems certain to me, that, being created male and female, no two lovers since the world began ever loved each other quite in the same way:  it is not in nature for it to be so.  They cannot compare:  only to the best that is in them they do love each after their kind,—­as do we for certain!

Be sure, then, that I am utterly contented with what I get (and you, Beloved, and you?):  nay, I wonder forever at the love you have given me:  and if I will to lay mine at your feet, and feel yours crowning my life,—­why, so it is, you know; you cannot alter it!  And if you insist that your love is at my feet, I have only to turn Irish and reply that it is because I am heels over head in love with you:—­and, mark you, that is no pretty attitude for a lady that you have driven me into in order that I may stick to my “crown”!

Go to, dearest!  There is one thing in which I can beat you, and that is in the bandying of words and all verbal conjurings:  take this as the last proof of it and rest quiet.  I know you love me a great great deal more than I have wit or power to love you:  and that is just the little reason why your love mounts till, as I tell you, it crowns me (head or heels):  while mine, insufficient and groveling, lies at your feet, and will till they become amputated.  And I can give you, but won’t, sixty other reasons why things are as I say, and are to be left as I say.  And oh, my world, my world, it is with you I go round sunwards, and you make my evenings and mornings, and will, till Time shuts his wings over us!  And now it is doleful business I have to write to you....

I have dropped to sleep over all this writing of things, and my cheek down on the page has made the paper unwilling to take the ink again:—­what a pretty compliment to me:  and, if you prefer it, what an easy way of writing to you!  I can send you such any day and be as idle as I like.  And you will decide about all the above exactly as you and I think best (or should it be “better” again, being only between us two?).  When you get this, blow your beloved self a kiss in the glass for me,—­a great big shattering blow that shall astonish Mercury behind his window-pane.  Good-night, my best—­or “better,” for that is what I most want you to be.

LETTER XXV.

My Own Beloved:  And I never thanked you yesterday for your dear words about the resurrection pie; that comes of quarreling!  Well, you must prove them and come quickly that I may see this restoration of health and spirits that you assure me of.  You avoid saying that they sent you to sleep; but I suppose that is what you mean.