Not a bit of it!  Sometimes, just by way of a little salutary training in renunciation, we don’t even meet every day.  No, the bulk of my time will be yours and mine; we will sit up here in my room, beneath my mother’s portrait; we will make the old days live again, weld the old and the new into one.  Then, Gabriel and I will take you with us for walks fitting a fairy, in the woods; how you will love them!  The trees are misty already with the promise of leaves, and all manner of sweet things are beginning to pierce the ground.  How we shall spoil you, we two!

So you are coming,—­I can hardly believe it.  Never say again that I shall forget you.  Let me remind you, Madam, if all else fail to convince you, that we two are women, and that there is one tender love, one yearning, which can only be betwixt woman and woman.

There is something infinitely pathetic in this truth; a man may be the dearest, the nearest he can never be.

But I must bless and leave thee.  I have promised to meet Gabriel at the Post-office.

My last letter.  No need to write again.  Oh, Constantia, can it be true?  Yours in all truth,

Emilia.

THE JOURNAL.

June 3d, at evening.—­I am weak, very weak.  I never could carry either joy or trouble pent up in my heart.

It has seemed sometimes of late that I must be stifled by the thing that troubles me.  Yet it is a trifling thing; nothing, I am sure, but a foolish, wicked fear, a little disease within myself.  If mamma were here, I should just go and lay my head on her knees, and tell her everything.  Then she would stroke my eyes and bid me see reason, and all would be well.  O my little mother, O great and dear one, why did you leave your child?

I remembered just now that it used to help me once to write things down.  That is what I must do.  I will put it away from me; perhaps, too, it will look so silly in solemn ink that I shall laugh at it instead of screaming, as I did just now with my face on the pillow.  And now that it comes to the point, I am ashamed of saying it.  My love is making me mad; was there ever such a fool?  I have been too happy, that is the whole truth—­far too happy.  Poor things, we carry grief well enough, cold grief; but hot joy cracks the frail vessel.

I have had a wonderful spring, with my two dearests; Constance sweeter than ever she was, even during her long illness giving some worth to the hours I might not spend with him, and he ever near.  Then, when we three were together, we were happy, too.  How silly of me to write “were”; they are still there, the summer days are long, I love them so well, they hold me so dear.

I have not written it.  No matter, I feel better; I already begin to laugh at myself.

June 4th.—­Their eyes met once at supper, only once, and they did not look at each other when they said good night.  Which means most, to look or not to look?  I cannot read clearly yet.  And one can certainly twice ask the same person to pass the salt without its meaning anything.  This is very ugly in me; my better self is filled with sorrow.  Surely it must be in every one’s power to quell the visions of the inmost eye when they rise sinfully, to close their ears against such whisperings as now I listen to.