Write and tell me soon where we shall meet.

Your Emilia.

LETTER XXVI.

Graysmill, February 7th.

So it’s all settled.  You are very good to me, my pretty Constance.  Now I say to myself hourly, “In sixteen days I shall see her,” and oh, believe me, I am glad!  I think I am beginning to lose my head, that I am fit for all folly.  We walked together yesterday; we were not very talkative.  In the lane, when we were coming home, a man on a bicycle turned sharply round the corner, and I was lost in thought, so that I was caught unawares, and in fact knew nothing of the matter until I felt myself pulled aside by Gabriel.  I thought he would let go my arm, but he did not, and for the few yards of road that remained I could not see out of my eyes.  I said to myself, “He is holding my arm,—­perhaps he loves me.”  I was a fool; of course, it meant nothing; and I am certain, too, that it was imagination on my part led me to believe he looked differently at me when he said good-bye.

That is what frightens me.  Of course, it was pure self-delusion; but, if I am going to begin that sort of folly, it is high time to come away.  Indeed, the folly of it.  Besides, I suppose I ought to feel ashamed.  I am sure he knows now quite well that I love him, and perhaps that is why he looked strangely at me when he said good-bye.  But I don’t want his pity; O God forbid!  Nor his, nor anybody’s.  Do you hear?  Never pity me, Constance.

Your little
Emilia.

LETTER XXVII.

February 12th.

Could you meet me a little sooner, perhaps, and not wait until the twenty-third?  I must leave Graysmill at once.  I shall go to the Cottage to-morrow afternoon, and tell them.  I shall tell the others tonight, and on Monday I shall leave Graysmill forever.  If you think you cannot reach Florence by Wednesday or Thursday, never mind, you will join me as soon as you can; only send me a telegram.  I can go and stay with Marianna until you come.

I can bear it no longer!  The world holds but one thought; the day and the night are lost in the constant reiteration of every word he ever said to me, in the resuscitation of every glance, every touch.  And, poring over these in my memory, I try to read between the lines the words that are not there, to read “I love you.”

Oh, I am very weak, yet, believe me, it is all against my will.  I have fought this folly, I despise myself utterly, and yet now I am swept away by the flood, I can struggle no more.  I shall die of this, or run mad.

I met him out to-day.  We had not arranged to meet; but, as I went out at the blue door, there he stood.  We went a little way together; then I left him; it was unbearable.  It was so beautiful once to be with him, when we could talk freely of all that is best and noblest in life.  I cannot talk to him now, sometimes I cannot even hear what he says to me.  I cannot see the sky, the broad white earth; I see him only.  I cannot hear the life-sounds about me; I only hear his footfall in the snow.  It is all pain, all dreadful pain, dreadful, unbearable longing.