Love will go flying after this till I sleep.  God bless you!—­and me also; it is all one and the same wish.—­Your most true, loving, and dear faithful one.

LETTER LIX.

I have to own that I know your will now, at last.  Without seeing you I am convinced:  you have a strong power in you to have done that!  You have told me the word I am to say to you:  it is your bidding, so I say it—­Good-by.  But it is a word whose meaning I cannot share.

Yet I have something to tell you which I could not have dreamed if it had not somehow been true:  which has made it possible for me to believe, without hearing you speak it, that I am to be dismissed out of your heart.—­May the doing of it cost you far less pain than I am fearing!

You did not come, though I promised myself so certainly that you would:  instead came your last very brief note which this is to obey.  Still I watched for you to come, believing it still and trusting to silence on my part to bring you more certainly than any more words could do.  And at last either you came to me, or I came to you:  a bitter last meeting.  Perhaps your mind too holds what happened, if so I have got truly at what your will is.  I must accept it as true, since I am not to see you again.  I cannot tell you whether I thought it or dreamed it, but it seems still quite real, and has turned all my past life into a mockery.

When I came I was behind you; then you turned and I could see your face—­you too were in pain:  in that we seemed one.  But when I touched you and would have kissed you, you shuddered at me and drew back your head.  I tell you this as I would tell you anything unbelievable that I had heard told of you behind your back.  You see I am obeying you at last.

For all the love which you gave me when I seemed worthy of it I thank you a thousand times.  Could you ever return to the same mind, I should be yours once more as I still am; never ceasing on my side to be your lover and servant till death, and—­if there be anything more—­after as well.

My lips say amen now:  but my heart cannot say it till breath goes out of my body.  Good-by:  that means—­God be with you.  I mean it; but He seems to have ceased to be with me altogether.  Good-by, dearest.  I kiss your heart with writing for the last time, and your eyes, that will see nothing more from me after this.  Good-by.

Note.—­All the letters which follow were found lying loosely together.  They only went to their destination after the writer’s death.

LETTER LX.

To-day, dearest, a letter from you reached me:  a fallen star which had lost its way.  It lies dead in my bosom.  It was the letter that lost itself in the post while I was traveling:  it comes now with half a dozen postmarks, and signs of long waiting in one place.  In it you say, “We have been engaged now for two whole months; I never dreamed that two moons could contain so much happiness.”  Nor I, dearest!  We have now been separated for three; and till now I had not dreamed that time could so creep, to such infinitely small purpose, as it has in carrying me from the moment when I last saw you.