without you now I can do nothing more.  I have done much—­and much remains to be done—­but if I am to attain, you must crown the attainment—­if my ambition is to find completion, you alone can be its completeness.  If you have the strength and the courage to face the ordeal through which Aselzion sends those who seek to follow his teaching, you will indeed have justified your claim to be considered higher than merest woman,—­though you have risen above that level already.  The lives of women generally, and of men too, are so small and sordid and self-centred, thanks to their obstinate refusal to see anything better or wider than their own immediate outlook, that it is hardly worth while considering them in the light of that deeper knowledge which teaches of the real life behind the seeming one.  In the ordinary way of existence men and women meet and mate with very little more intelligence or thought about it than the lower animals; and the results of such meeting and mating are seen in the degenerate and dying nations of to-day.  Moreover, they are content to be born for no other visible reason than to die—­and no matter how often they may be told there is no such thing as death, they receive the assertion with as much indignant incredulity as the priesthood of Rome received Galileo’s assurance that the earth moves round the sun.  But we—­you and I—­who know that life, being all Life, cannot die,—­ought to be wiser in our present space of time than to doubt each other’s infinite capability for love and the perfect world of beauty which love creates. I do not doubt—­my doubting days are past, and the whips of sorrow have lashed me into shape as well as into strength, but you hesitate,—­because you have been rendered weak by much misunderstanding.  However, it has partially comforted me to place the position fully before you, and having done this I feel that you must be free to go your own way.  I do not say ’I love you!’—­such a phrase from me would be merest folly, knowing that you must be mine, whether now or at the end of many more centuries.  Your soul is deathless as mine is—­it is eternally young, as mine is,—­and the force that gives us life and love is divine and indestructible, so that for us there can be no end to the happiness which is ours to claim when we will.  For the rest I leave you to decide—­you will go to the House of Aselzion and perhaps you will remain there some time,—­at any rate when you depart from thence you will have learned much, and you will know what is best for yourself and for me.

My beloved, I commend you to God with all my adoring soul and am

Your lover, Rafel Santoris