They had opened a wooden box which lay beside them.  
“Ten years!” she said. “How they have faded!”
“And the creases are tight,” said he; “they will be hard to read.”
“Letters! letters!” she exclaimed—“some of them sixty pages long! How much would they make?”
“Perhaps a quarter of a million words,” he said.
“What is to be done about it?”
“They must be selected, and then cut, and then trimmed and pruned.”
“And will that leave any idea of it?”
He answered with a simile. “You wish to convey to a man how it feels to pound stone for twelve hours in the sun. The only way you could really do it would be to take him and let him pound for twelve hours. But he wouldn’t stand for that.”
“So you let him pound for one hour,” said she, with a smile.
“I will put up a sign,” he said—
   ‘HERE BEGINS THE STONE-POUNDING!’ 
And then those who are interested will come in and try it; and the rest will peer through the fence and pass on.”
To which she responded, “I would make the sign read,
   ‘ADMISSION TO LOVERS ONLY!’”
 
MY THYRSIS!
 
Oh, if I might only stay in a convent until you are ready to take me! Since I left you I find myself possessed of cravings, which, if I indulged them, might bring me the fate of the Maid of Neidpath!
Truly I have known some miserable moments. But I am trying very hard to cultivate a happy, confident activity. The people here are aggressive, and I am afraid I have been rude, which I never like to be. I just succeeded in getting away from a young man who wanted to walk to the village with me. Do you know, it would drive me absolutely mad to talk to anyone now!
My soul has only one cry, and I could sometimes go out on the mountain-side and scream it aloud to the winds. I fear I shall be a trifle wild, in fact utterly in pieces, until you come, with that wonderful recipe of yours for binding me together, and making me complete. I think of you in your house, and wish to God I were there, or out in the desert even, if you were with me.
When I passed through the city I felt exactly as if I were in Hades. The glaring lights and the fearful rattle, the lazy, lounging men—I had dinner in a restaurant, in which all the people seemed to be feeding demons! It has been distinctly shown me why so many people have thought you a rude unmannerly boy! I don’t know what people would think, if I had to be amongst them long.
I have begun so many letters to you in my mind, and oh, the times I have told myself how much I loved you! I have read your letters and slept with them under my pillow, like the veriest love-lorn maiden. But all my happy thoughts are gone at present. It is distracting to me to have to come into such close contact with people.
Oh, tell me, dearest one, what I shall have to do to control myself and preserve the peace of my soul, until I go to you forever? I must not long to see you, it prevents me from studying. If you might only come to me at one moment in the day, and give me one kiss, and then go away! You see, I am conducting myself in a very unwise manner—and it is necessary I should study! I should love to have an indomitable capacity for work, and eat only two meals a day, and never have to think about my body.
I want to tell you what I feel, how utterly and absolutely I am yours, and how any image that comes between you and me enrages me. If only you knew how I give myself up to you in thought, word, and deed!—My one reason for acting now, is that I may show you something I have done, my one thought is to be what you would wish me. No one, no one understands, or ever will, what is in your heart and in mine—to be locked there for ages. There I have placed all my power of love and religion and hope of the life that is to be. To you I give all my trust, all my worship, you are the one link that binds me to myself and to God. Without you I feel now that I should be a poor wanderer.
You give me my feeling of wholeness, of the possibility of completion, that I never had before. In my best and truest moments I know that with you I can be what I have hoped. With you before my eyes I have a grim resolution to conquer or die. The one thing I am sure of always is my love for you. It might be possible for you to stop loving me; but I, now that I have begun, shall continue to love you to the day I die—and after, I hope. I do not love you for what you can give me, I love you because you are you, I must love you now no matter what you are. I believe Shakespeare was right when he said that “love is not love which alters, when it alteration finds.” I do not believe that a person can really love more than once.
I must go to my German again and leave you. Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?
II. My dearest Corydon:
I received a letter from you before dinner, and as usual had one of my flights of emotion, and thought of many things to write to you. Now I am up on the mountain-side, trying to recall them. Dearest, you are, as always, more precious to me. I am glad to see that you are suffering some, and I think that it is well that you have to be away from me for awhile, to fight some of your own soul’s battles. You see that I am in my stern humor; as convinced as ever that the soul is to be deepened only by effort, and that the great glory of life cannot be bought or stolen, or even given for love, but must be earned.
I will tell you what I have been doing since you left. I spent three whole days in the most unimaginable wretchedness; I had no hindrances like yours—only the most fearful burden of dullness and sloth, that had crept upon me and mastered me, during all the weeks that I had let myself be so upset and delayed. I cannot picture what I go through when I lose my self-command in that way, but it is like one who is tied down upon a railroad track and hears a train coming. He gets just as desperate as he pleases, and suffers anything you can imagine—but he does not get free. And always the book would be hanging before me, a kind of external conscience, to show me what I ought to have been.
Now I have gotten myself out of that, by an effort that has quite worn me out. When I found myself at work again, I felt a kind of savage joy of effort, a greater power than I ever knew before. In the reckless mood that I had got to, it seemed to me that I could keep so forever.
Now dearest, you must get the same unity in your life; you must concentrate all your faculties upon that—get for yourself that precious habit of being “instant in prayer”, and “strenuous for the bright reward”. As Wordsworth has it, “Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness!” Let it come to you with a pang that hurts you, that for one minute you have been idle, that you have admitted to yourself that life is a thing of no consequence, and that you do not care for it. I shall have to talk to you that way—perhaps not so often as I do to myself, because I do not think you are really in your heart such a very dull and sodden creature as I am.
I think the greatest trial we shall have will be our fondness for each other, and the possibility of being satisfied simply to hold each other in our arms. But we shall get the better of that, as of everything else; and that is not the problem now. You must learn to strive, learn to master yourself; you must prove your power so. Do not care how rude you have to be to those people; look upon the things about you as a kind of dream-world, and know that your own soul’s life is the one real thing for you. And don’t write any more about how circumstances hold you back. When you have got to work you will know that you are given your soul for no purpose but to fight circumstances; that they are the things to make you fight. When they are removed, as I know to my cost, there is still the same necessity of fighting; only it is like a horse who has to win a race without the spurs.
You must talk to yourself about this, night and day, until this desire is so awake in you that you can’t go idle many moments without its rushing into your mind, and giving you a kind of electric shock. And when that happens you fling aside every thing else, every idea but the work that you ought to be doing, and put all your faculties upon that; and every time that you catch them wandering, you do the same thing again, and again. Some times when I become very keenly aware of myself, and of what a shallow creature I really am, it seems to me that it is only by wearing myself out in that grim and savage way that I can make myself even tolerable.
I must stop. Do you know that for five precious hours by my watch I have sat up here thinking about you and writing to you? Dear me—and I am tired, and frozen, for there is a cold wind. I shall have, I see, to prove some of my powers, by not writing letters to you when I should be at the book.
I see that it takes four or five days for letters to come and go between us; and so if we write often, our letters will be crossing. Four or five days is time enough for us to change our moods a dozen times, so our correspondence will be apt to be complicated!
III. MY DEAREST THYRSIS:
 
It has worried me somewhat to-day that you might be utterly disappointed in the letter I wrote you. It was a wild jumble of words, but I was fighting all sorts of uncomfortable things within me. To-day I have been anything but despairing, and have “gone at” the German. In fact, I quite lost myself in it, and believe I understand thoroughly the construction of the first poem. Wonderful accomplishment!
Your words, as I read them again, dear heart, are full of a great beauty and fire and energy, and I only hope you may keep them always. I believe that the possibility of the marriage we both desire, depends greatly if not entirely on your sternness. You must realize it.
I cannot tell with the proper conditions and training what energy I might be able to accumulate for myself, but in the meanwhile the thing that makes me most wretched is my utter incapacity at times, and my inability to share with you your work. In my weaker and more helpless moods, I ask myself with a pang, whether I ought to go with you at all, when I cannot help you. But I must stop fuming. I have come out of my mudpuddle for good and for all, and that is the main consideration. I don’t intend to go back.
We must not think of each other in any way but as co-workers in a great labor; we must simply know that our love is rooted deeply, and the harder we work the more firm it will be. There is no reason why we should not go to the altar with just this sternness, and from now on preserve this attitude until the day when we have earned the right to consider what love means. Can you do it? I will prove to you that I can.
IV. MY DEAR THYRSIS:
 
I am trying very dreadfully, and go away alone and pound at the German as if my life depended upon it. I go to bed every night with a tight feeling in my head, but I do not mind, as I take it for a guarantee that I have not rested.
And oh, my dearest, dearest and best, I am trying not to think of you too much—that is too much in a way that does not help me to study. But I love you really, yes, truly, and I know I would follow you anywhere. I am not particularly joyful, but then I do not expect to be for a great many years.
V. DEAR THYRSIS:
 
Only a few words. I have been hovering to-day between spurts of hopeful energy, and the most indescribable despair. It positively freezes my heart, and I have been on the point of writing to you and telling you to relieve yourself of the responsibility of me. The reason is because it seems a perfectly Herculean task to read “Egmont”. I have to look up words in the dictionary until I am absolutely so weary I care not about anything; and then I think of you, and what you are able to do, and at one word from you I would give up all idea of marrying you.
I tell you I am up and down in this mood. Great God, I could work all day and all night if I could do what you do, but to strain at iron fetters—a snail! Oh, I cannot tell you—I simply groan under it. At such times I have no more idea of marrying you than of journeying to the moon. I repeat to you, to be constantly choked back, while you are rapidly advancing, will kill me. I don’t know what you will say to this, but it is intolerable, unendurable, to me. When I think of your ability and mine, I simply laugh about it—Thyrsis, it is simply ridiculous. I do not ask you to take me with you, Thyrsis.
Do you wonder at my writing all this? You would not if you understood. It is so hard for me to keep any joy in my heart, and I get tired of repeated failures, that is all. I thought I must write you this, and have it over with. This is the style of letter I have always torn up, but this time it goes. I think I will practice the piano now, and try to get some gladness into my soul again.
VI. MY DEAR, DEAR THYRSIS:
 
There is a dreadful sort of letter which I wrote you last night which I haven’t sent you yet.
I have been studying, or trying to most of the day, and my mind has wandered most painfully. There were two days in which I seemed to have hold of myself, but with an effort that was a fearful strain. I must try so, that it almost kills me, if I wish to accomplish even a little of what I ought. The heat here is almost insupportable, it is stifling, and I spent an hour or so in the water this afternoon.
And the thought is always torture to me—that you are accomplishing so much more than I! I was thinking of your letters to-night, and I recalled some words that seemed to speak more of your love for me. Oh, Thyrsis, if your letters are fiery and passionate, is it for love of me that they are? I’m almost afraid at times, when I read your letters—when you tell me of the kind of woman you want to love.
I at present am certainly not she. And do you know that when we are married we shall be united forever? I don’t know why I write you these things, they are not at all inspiring thoughts to me.
And yet I was able to go in swimming this afternoon, and forget everything and frolic around as happily as any water-baby!
VII. MY DEAR CORYDON:
 
I came off to write my poem, but I have been thinking about you, and I must write a long letter. It is one of the kind that you do not like.
In the first place, you complain of the contradictions in my letters. I am sorry. I live so, struggling always with what is not best in me, and continually falling down. Also, in this matter I am an utter stranger, groping my way; and there is an element of passion in it, a dangerous element, which leads me continually astray.
I can only say that in my ideal of love, which is utter love and spiritual love, I think of living my life with you in entire nakedness of soul. Therefore, I shall always be before you exactly as I should be by myself. And I shall write you now exactly what I have been thinking, what is hard and unkind in it, as well as the rest. You will learn to know me as a man far from perfect, often going astray himself, often feeling wrong things, often leading you astray and making you wretched. But behind all this there is the thing often lost sight of, but always present—the iron duty that I have, and the force in me which drives me to it.
All this morning I have been thinking of my book, losing myself in it and filling myself with its glory. This afternoon I fell to thinking about us; and thoughts which have been lurking in my mind for a long time got the upper hand for the first time. They were that I did not love you as I ought to, that I could not; that the love which I felt was a thing from my own heart, and that it had carried me away because I was anxious to persuade myself I had found my ideal upon earth; that you could not satisfy the demands upon life that I made, and that if I married you it would be to make you wretched, and myself as well; that you had absolutely nothing of the things that I needed, and that the life which your nature required was entirely different from mine; that you had no realization of the madness that was driving me, could find and give me none of the power I needed; and that I ought to write and tell you this, no matter what it cost—that I owed it to the sacred possibility of my own soul, to live alone if I could live better alone. And when I had said these words, I felt a sense of relief, because they were haunting me, and had been for a long time.
How they will affect you I cannot tell, it depends upon deep your love for me is; certainly they mean for me that my love is not deep, that you have not made yourself necessary to me. I think that in that last phrase I put the whole matter in its essence—you have not bound yourself to me; I am always struggling to keep my love firm and right, to hold myself to you. The result is that there is no food for my soul in the thought of our love, in my thought of you; and therefore, I am continually dissatisfied and doubting, continually feeling the difference between the love I have dreamed and our love.
I tried to think the matter out, and get to the very bottom of it. The first thing that came to me on the other side was your absolute truth; your absolute devotion to what was right and noble in our ideal. So that, as I was thinking, I suddenly stopped short with this statement—“If you cannot find right love with that girl, it must be because you do not honor love, or care for it.” And then I thought of your helplessness, of your lack of training and opportunity for growth; and I told myself how absurd it was of me to expect satisfying love from you—when all that I knew about in life, and thought of, was entirely unknown to you. I realized that I was a man who had tasted more or less of all knowledge, and had an infinite vision of knowledge yet before him, and an infinite hunger for it; and that you were a school-girl, with all of a school-girl’s tasks on your hands. So I said to myself that the reason for the dissatisfaction was a fault of my own, that it had come from my own blindness. I had gone wrong in my attitude to you; I had failed in my sternness and my high devotion to perfection; I had contented myself with lesser things, had come down from my best self, and had failed to make you see what a task was before you, if you ever meant to know my best self. You perceive that this is a return to my old-time attitude; I am sorry if it makes you wretched, but I cannot help it. It is a surgical operation that must be borne. I shall not make it necessary again, I hope.
Now, dear Corydon, I am not trying to choose pleasant words in this letter, this is the way I talk to myself. And if anything good comes from our love, it will be because of this letter. I challenge what is noblest in you to rise to meet the truth of it. I should not care to write to you if I did not feel that it would.
You have had a possibility offered to you, and because you are very hungry for life you have clasped it to you, placed all your happiness in it. The possibility is the love of a man whose heart has been filled with the fire of genius. There are few men whom life takes hold of as it does me, who sacrifice themselves for their duty as I do, who demand experience—knowledge, power, beauty—as I do. There are very few men who will wrest out of existence as much as I will, or know and have as much of life. I am a boy just now, and only beginning to live; but I have my purpose in hand, and I know that if I am given health and life, there is nothing that men have known that I shall not know, nothing that is done in the world that I shall not do, or try to. I have a strong physique, and I labor day and night, and always shall. I shall always be hungry and restless, always dissatisfied with myself, and with everything about me, and acting and feeling most of the time like a person haunted by a devil. I make no apologies to you for the conceit of what I am saying; it is what I think of myself, without caring what other people think. I know that I have a tremendous temperament, tremendous powers hidden within me, and they have got to come out. When they do, the world will know what I know now.
Now Corydon, as you understand, I dream love absolute, and would scorn any other kind. I can master my passion, if it be that upon earth there is no woman willing or able to go with me to the last inch of my journey. I dream a life-companion to follow wherever my duty drives me; to feel all the desperateness of desire that I feel, to be stern and remorseless as I must be, wild and savage as I must be; to race through knowledge with me and to share my passion for truth with me; a woman with whom I need have no shame in the duty of my genius! As I tell you, if I marry you, I expect to give myself to you as your own heart; and then I think of the gentle and mild existence you have led!
It is very hard for me even to tell about my life, or to explain this thing that drives me mad. But I am writing this letter to you for the purpose of making clear to you that there are two alternatives before you, and that you must choose one or the other and stick by it, and bear the consequences. It is painful to me to think that I have fascinated you by what opportunities I have, even by what power and passion and talents I have, and filled you with a hunger for me—when really you do not realize at all what I am, or what I must be, and when what I have to do will terrify you. I write in the thought of terrifying you now, and making you give up this red-hot iron that you are trying to hold on to; or else to show you my life so plainly that never afterwards can you blame me, or shrink back except by your own fault.
You must not blame me for writing these words, for wondering if a woman, if any woman has power to stand what I need to do. And when I talk to you about giving me up, you must not think that is cold, but know that it is my faithfulness to my vision, which is the one thing to which I owe any duty in the world. Nor is it right that you should expect to be essential to me, when I have labored to be all to myself. You could become necessary to me in the years to come; if I marry you to-day I shall marry you for what you are to become, and for that alone—at any rate if I am true to myself.
If you are to be my wife you are to be my soul—to live my soul’s life and bear its pain. You are to understand that I talk to you as I talk to myself, call you the names I call myself, and if you cry, give you up in disgust; that I am to deny you all pleasure as I do myself, and what God knows will be ten thousand times harder, let you take pleasure, and then spring up in the very midst of it—you know what I mean! That I am to be ever dissatisfied with you, ever inconsiderate of your feelings, and ever declaring that you are failing! That however much I may love you, I am to be your conscience, and therefore keep you—just about as you are now, miserable! You told me that you would gladly be whipped to learn to live; and this can be the only thing to happen to you.
You must understand why I act in this way. I am a weak and struggling man, with a thousand temptations; and when I marry you, you will be the greatest temptation of all. You are a beautiful girl, and I love you, and every instinct of my nature drives me to you; for me to live with you without kissing you or putting my arms about you, will remain always difficult. It will be so for you, as for me, and it will always be our danger, and always make us wretched. Your soul rises in you as I write this, and you say (as you’ve said before) that if I offered to kiss you after it, it would be an insult. But only wait until we meet!
This is the one thing that has become clear to me: just as soon as there comes the least thought of satisfaction in our love, just so soon does it cease to satisfy my best self. You cannot satisfy my best self, you do not even know it; and if it were a question of that, I should never dream of marrying you! I love you for this and for this alone—because you are an undeveloped soul, the dream of whose infinite possibilities is my one delight in the matter. I think that you are perfect in character, that you are truth itself; and therefore, no matter how helpless you may be, I have no fear of failing to make you “all the world to me”, provided only that I am not false to my ideal. You must know from what I have written before that I can love, that I do know what love is, and that you may trust me. I am not trying to degrade passion—I simply see how passion throws the burden on the woman, and therefore it is utterly a crime with us—the least thought of it! I ought to consider you as a school-girl, really just that; and instead of that I write you love letters!
I tell you there is nothing more hateful for me to look back upon than that childish business of ours, that time when we went upstairs that we might kiss each other unseen. I tell you, it revolts my soul, from love and from you! I should be perfectly willing to take all the blame—I do; only I have led you to like that (or to act as if you did) and I must stop it. Can you not understand how hateful it is to me to think of making you anything that I should be disgusted with?
I expect you to read over this letter until you realize that it is, every word of it, completely true and noble, and until you can write me so. You and I are to feel ourselves two school-children and live just so. It is not usual for school-children to marry, but that we dare upon the strength of our purpose, and in defiance of all counsel, and of every precedent. We are to feel that we owe our duty to our ideal; and that simply because of the strength and passion of our love for each other, we demand perfection, each of the other. My setting this stern challenge before you is nothing but my determination to give you my right love, to demand that you be a perfect woman.
I promise you therefore no quarter; I shall make no sacrifice of my ideal for your sake. As I wrote you, I mean to be absolutely one with you, and I expect you to be the same. You shall have (if you wish it) all of my soul—I shall live my life with you and think all my thoughts aloud—study to give you everything that I have. And God only, who knows my heart, knows what utter love for you lies in those words, what utter trust of you—how I think of you as being purity and holiness itself. To offer to take any other being into my soul, to lay bare all the secret places of it to its gaze, all the weaknesses as well as all the strength, and all that is vain as well as all that is sacred! You cannot know how I feel about my heart, but this you may know, that no one else has had a glimpse of it, you are the first and the last; and so sure am I of you that I dare to say it, all my life will I live in your presence, and trust to your sympathy and truth—and feel that I am false to love if I do not. If there were anything in my heart so foul that I feared to speak of it, I should give you that first, as the sacrifice of love; or any vanity or foible—such things are really hardest to have others know, so great is our conceit.
If I could talk to you to-night, I should do just as I did up on the hill in the moonlight—frighten you, and make you wonder if there was any woman who wished to bear such a burden; and perhaps the saddest thing of all to me is that I do not bear it—instead I bear the gnawing of a conscience bitter and ashamed of itself. And could you bear that burden? For Corydon, as I look at myself to-night, I am before God, a coward and a dastard! I have not done my work! I have not borne the pain He calls me to bear, I have not wrested out the strength He put in my secret heart! And here I am chattering, talking about work to you! And these things are like a nightmare to me; they turn all my life’s happiness to gall. And you are taking upon yourself this same burden—coming to help me to get rid of it. Or if you do not wish to, for God’s sake, and mine, and yours, don’t come near me—you have come too near as it is! Can you not see that when I am face to face with these fearful things—and you come and ask me to give my life to you, to worship you with the best faculties I possess—that I have no right to say yes?
You once told me you were happy because I called you “mein guter Geist, mein bess’res Ich”; well, you are not in the least that. The name that I give you, and that you may keep, is “the beautiful possibility of a soul”. Remember a phrase I told you at the very beginning of our love, of the peril of “ceasing to love perfection and coming to love a woman.” And read Shelley’s sad note to “Epipsychidion”!
VIII. Dear Corydon:
You tell me in your last letter that you are leaving all who love you; and you ask “How do you know that because you love beauty, you will love me?”
I have been thinking a good deal about this; I do not believe, Corydon, that a man more haunted by the madness of desire ever lived upon earth than I. And when I get at the essence of myself, I do not believe that I am a kind man; I think that a person with less patience for human hearts never existed, perhaps with less feeling. There is only one thing in the world that I can be sure of, or that you can, my fidelity to my ideal! I know that however often I may fail or weaken, however many mistakes I may make, my hunger for the things of the soul will never leave me, and that night and day I shall work for them. I do not believe I have the right to promise you anything else, I have no right to dream of anything else; this is not my pleasure, as I feel it, it is a frenzy, it is that to which some blind and nameless and merciless impulse drives me. And I may try to persuade myself all my life that I love you, Corydon, and nothing else, and want nothing else; and all the time in the depths of my heart I hear these words from my conscience—“You are a fool.” I love power, I love life, and seek them and strive for them, and care for nothing else and never have; and nothing else can satisfy me. And I cannot give any other love than this, any other promise.
IX. My dear Corydon:
I have been taking a walk this morning, thinking about us, and that I had treated you fearfully. The whole truth of it all is this—that I am so raw and so young and so helpless (and you are as much, if not more so) that I cannot, to save my life, be sure if my love for you is what it ought to be, or even if I could love any one as I ought. And I am so wretchedly dissatisfied! Do you know that for two weeks I have been trying to write a passage of my book—and before God, I cannot! I have not the power, I have not the life!
Dear Corydon, it comes to me that you are miserable to be in love with me—that I had no right to put this burden on your shoulders. I would say better things if I could, but I think that our marriage will be a setting out across a wild ocean in the dark! It is for you to be the heroine, to dare the voyage if you choose. These sound like wild words, but they are the truth of my life, and I dare not say any others. Can a girl who has been brought up in gentleness and sweetness, in innocence of life and of pain—can she say things, feel things like these?
X. Thyrsis:
God did not endow me with your tongue, or else it would not be the great effort it is to me to tell you some of the thoughts that have rushed through my mind in the last hour.
It is an hour since I began to read your letter of Horrible Truth. Now it seems to me it might have been in the last year, in the last century. Actually I feel like a stranger to myself; and my movements are very slow. First, I will tell you that I believe in God, oh, so implicitly—this thought gives me infinite hope. I long to let you know as much of my heart as I can, if I am to be your life-companion, as I firmly believe I am to be. I have such a strange calmness now, and I imagine that I must feel very much the way Rip Van Winkle did when he awoke. I want to try to show you my heart—it is right that I should try, is it not?
Know that I have placed much faith and trust in you, in anything that you did. If you opened one door to me and told me it led to the great and permanent truth, I believed you absolutely. If you hauled me back and put me through an opposite one, telling me that there my road lay, I believed you with equal faith. Now, now, at the end of an hour, I am, through you, convinced of one door, the only and true entrance; and I am as sure as I am that the sun is shining at this moment, that nothing in God’s world can ever again make me lose sight of it. I have found that you can lose sight of it, Thyrsis,—something shows me that I have in the last month been more right than you. Yes, I have, Thyrsis, though you may not know it. And the reason I couldn’t stay right was because I am not strong enough to grasp my good impulses, and keep hold of them: because I have not enough faith in the soul within me.
I will try to tell you what I have felt since reading your letter. All is so disgustingly calm in me now. But listen, I believe I have had a little glimpse this afternoon of what it is to feel; and because of that knowledge I now am not afraid to tell you that I claim something of God and life—that I can get it if you can. This has been very strong in me at moments, but, as I tell you, I have not yet learned to hold my glimpses of truth—they seem to come to me, and as quickly disappear.
I began to read your letter, and I cannot describe to you the convulsion that came over me. It seemed that I had the feeling of an empty skull on a desert; such a feeling—you can never have it! All the horror and despair! I tried to form my thoughts and tell myself it was not true. I tried to pray, and I did pray—out loud—and asked God to give me strength to read the letter.
I tried to use all the penetration I was capable of, to find out one thing, whether you were purely and unreservedly sincere in it. I wondered whether you really wished to live your life alone, but could not find the courage to tell me so. I firmly believe that no failure in the future, no disgust or helplessness, could ever bring me the complete anguish of those moments.
Can you realize what such a thing meant to me, Thyrsis?
Last spring, I had succeeded in bringing myself into an almost complete state of coma—I saw that I could do nothing, and because I would not endure such profitless pain I drugged myself to sleep. And you, you fiend, waked me up; and may your soul be thrice cursed if you have only pulled the doll to pieces to see what it was made of! Know, you that have a soul which says it lives and suffers—that I can’t go to sleep again! There is no joy for me in mother or father, in friends or admiration—I can tolerate nothing that I tolerated before you came with your cursed or blessed fire!
Also, if you do not marry me, or if I do not find some man who has your strength and desire for life, and who will take me and help me to learn, I shall die without having lived.—And I cried out in misery—only forty-two years, only forty-two little years, and I shall be an old woman of sixty! Only forty-two years in which to learn to live!
I believe if I had you here now I could almost strangle you. We may kill each other some day. I sometimes feel that there is nothing that will give me any relief, that I cannot breathe, I cannot support my body. But these are foolish and unprofitable feelings—and I believe I will yet be saved, if not by you, perhaps by myself. I think some heavenly aid came to me to-day. I asked for it, I simply said it must come—and now I am able to bear myself and look around me, and say that the secret of my liberation is not death but life.
Please realize, Thyrsis, that I know you do not need me, that I cannot either entertain you or help you. My dear, do you not know that I have been conscious of this from the very beginning—and it has been this thought that has often made me worry, and doubt, and question. And then I have told myself that you had found something in me to love; and that I also was very hungry to know about life and God; and that if you loved me enough to believe I was not dross, we might, with our untiring devotion—well, we might be right in going with each other. And now—would you rather I should tell you I will not marry you, be my desire, or effort, what it may? I do not know—even though I want to live so terribly. I have no word, no proof to give!
And now, Thyrsis, I have no more strength to write. I only wish I had some power to make you know what I have felt this afternoon—I think if I could, you would have no more doubt of me. And I believe it is my God-given right not to doubt myself.
I will write no more—I have written enough to make you answer one of two things. “Come with me,” or, “I would rather go alone.” I know which one it will be, even now in my wretchedness. The sky is so blue this evening, and everything is so beautiful—and I am trying so hard to be right, to feel strong and confident!
XI. Dear Thyrsis:
I have just arisen. I woke in the middle of the night, and there was a spectre sitting by my bedside to frighten me; he succeeded at first, but I managed finally to get rid of him, and to find some peace. Many of your sentences came to me, and I was able to get behind the words, and I saw plainly that the letters were just what you should have written, and that they could not but benefit me. They have accomplished their purpose, I believe—they are burned into my soul, and have placed me rightly in our relation. I shall simply never trust the permission you may give me, in the future, to rest or be satisfied. I shall only hate you, for the pain of some of your words I shall never forget.
The memory of the first two pages of your letter will always put me in mortal terror of you. For the rest, I am very grateful, and I will try to show you how I love your ideal. I can never repay you as long as I live for letting me come with you. Oh Thyrsis, I am sure that I will never think or care whether you love me or not, if only I may go with you and learn how to strive!
I tore up all your love-letters this morning. I kept the last letter—though I do not think I could bear to read it over. I should be afraid of again going through with that despair. Oh, I beg for the time when I shall be obliged to waste none of my minutes—and when I shall have no opportunity of writing you! What time I have spent over your letters and mine!
XII. Dear Thyrsis:
I am restlessly waiting for the supper-bell to ring, and my head is aching intensely, and I am generally topsy-turvy. Alas! alas! the distance that separates us and our understanding!
I received a letter to-day while I was studying—but said I would not open it for a week, that I wanted strength to study. Well, I studied all the afternoon and found it none too easy. When I came home, I thought perhaps it was better to read your letter, which I grimly did.
Do you know, you are keeping me on the rack, literally on the rack, and my flesh and blood do not seem to be able to stand it—my body seems to be the organ that first fails me, my brain is never so tired as my body. I love to think that you are not less merciful to me than you would be to yourself, I feel that you could not have used more cruel whips to yourself. Do you suppose that any disgust, scolding, or malediction to me could, as your wife, hurt me, as your doubt of me hurts me now?
And I just begin to read your letter again, and I tell you, you are a fool. You say you do not know whether you could love any one as you ought—well, I, with all my weakness, know whether I can love, and I love you a thousand times more than you have given me cause to. And you are so hungry! Will you always starve because you are blind? As to being satisfied, how could you be? But you say you will love me as much as I deserve. How much do I deserve—do you know? I sometimes cry out against you and long to get hold of you. If you have genius, why doesn’t it give you some inkling whether you are a man with a heart, not only a stupid boy? And then I see it all plainly, or think I do, and know that you are trying so hard to be right towards us, because you think you love me the way other people love; and you know if I am weak, it would degrade your genius; and you cannot be sure of my character or strength. You cannot know whether I realize the life I am selecting—you have found it hard, and you have every reason to think that I will find it ten times harder; and you love me in a way that is not the highest,—but yet you love me enough, thank God, to tell me the whole truth!
I have come to a pass where I can say to myself with truth, that I do not care how much or how little you love me. That depends upon you, as well as myself. I believe the time will come, when you will love me as you ought, and I say this in perfect calm conviction, in all my weakness, and with all my maudlin habits clinging to me. Strangely enough your doubt of me has made me rise up in arms to champion my cause, or else I should lie down forever in the dust, and deny my God.
I wonder whether it is my love for you that makes me believe? I cling to you, as a mother might cling to her child; I cling to you as the embodiment, the promise, of all I will ever find true in life. I look to live in you, to fulfil all my possibilities in you, and if you die or forsake me, all my hope is gone, and I am dead. This is a letter in which I have no scorn or doubt, or ridicule of myself, as formerly.
And then you ask me, “Can a girl brought up in gentleness and sweetness, and innocence of life and of pain, can she say things, feel things like these?” It is the gentleness and sweetness and innocence that are galling to me. I can tolerate no more of them. They have warped me, they have given me no chance. But I have had some pain in my life, and since I have known you I have known more about pain and what it brings, and leaves.—And now I am feeling ill, and I cannot control that. Oh, God!
XIII. Dearest Corydon:
I have a chance to finish the first part of my book to-day, and save myself from Hades; and here I am writing to you—just a line. (Of course it turned out to be six pages!)
Your last letter was very noble; I can only say to you, that the treatment which makes you upbraid me is not done for my sake; that the life which I live is not lived for my sake. You say perhaps you are better than I; it is very possible—I often think so myself; but that is nothing to the point. I should be very wretched if I sat down to think what I am. Oblige me by being better than my ideal—if you can! You must understand, dearest, that behind all that I am doing, there is truth to the soul; and that truth to the soul is love, and the only love. I am seeking for nothing but the privilege of treating you as myself; and rest assured, that if I treat you any differently it will be better than I treat myself! There is no peril in our life except that!
Some day you will understand that I can sometimes feel about myself that I am utterly hateful, utterly false, utterly shallow and bad; and that to get away from myself would be all that I desire in life. I cannot imagine my having such opinion of you; but some dissatisfaction—just a little—I may have. Only let us love perfection, you and I, with all our souls, and I think our love for each other may safely be allowed to take care of itself. Remember the two ships in Clough’s poem, which parted, but sailed by the compass, and reached the same port.
I shall spend no more time comforting you about this.
And dear Corydon, when you are angry at my doubting your power, and say that I do not know you, I can only reply—Why of course I don’t, and neither do you. You find your own self out little by little—why get angry with me because I don’t know it until you tell me? You are a grown woman compared to what you were three months ago; and this character that you ask me to know—well, it takes years of hard labor to prove a character.
XIV. Dearest Corydon:
Do you ever realize how much faith in you I have? As utterly different is your whole life, as if you had been in another world; and through all the wilderness that I have travelled, I hope to drag you. But I cannot carry you, or take you; I must trust in the frenzy of your grip upon me. There is nothing else you could have that I would trust. You might be wonderfully clever and wonderfully wise—and I could do nothing with you. Do you remember Beethoven’s saying, that he would like to take a certain woman, if he had time, and marry her and break her heart, so that she might be able to sing?
Ah dear heart, I wish you could read in my words what I feel! I wonder if I am dreaming when I live in this ideal of what a woman’s love can be—so complete and so utter a surrender, so complete a forgetting, a losing of the self, so complete a living in another heart! I am not afraid to ask just this from a woman—from you! For I have enough heart’s passion to satisfy every thirst that you may feel. Ah, Corydon, I want you! I am drunk with the thought of making a woman to love. I wonder if any man ever thought of that before! Artists go about the world with the great hunger of their hearts, and expecting to find by chance another soul like the one they have spent years in making beautiful and swift and strong; but has anyone ever thought that instead of writing books that no one understands, he might be making another kind of an artwork—one that would be alive, and with sacred possibilities of its own?
XV. DEAR THYRSIS:
 
Your last letters have been very beautiful. I see one thing—though you inform me that you believe you are a hard man, your natural gentleness and sympathy of heart would be the ruin of both of us in the future if I would permit it. But I think you can trust me, not ever as long as I live to lead you into weakness. My desperateness, before I received your letter saying that I might come with you, was rather dreadful; it made me doubt myself, for it was so difficult to keep myself from going to pieces. I have been wicked enough, to wonder whether I could ever make you feel as I felt for two days—if I could only bring to your heart that one pang, the only real one I ever felt in my life! But it taught me one thing, that the only road toward realization of life and one’s self is through suffering. I found out that I could bear, for it seems to me as I look back at that horrible nightmare, that it was almost by a superhuman effort I was able to read the letter at all. But enough of that!
I think I have effectually cured myself of any weak yearning for your love. I go to you in gratefulness, knowing what I lack and what you need. Anything my love can do for you, it shall do. It may have some power—I sometimes think that it could have more than you realize.
I suppose every woman has thought that the man she loved was her very life, but I do not think it of you, I simply know it. I must go with you, whether I loved you or not.
Meanwhile my love has assumed a strength to me that I never felt before. I don’t know how my wild and incoherent letters have affected you, but there were many times when I longed to get hold of you, literally, and simply shake into you some recognition of my soul. Oh, I am afraid you couldn’t get away from me; the more merciless you are to me, the wilder I get.
I am possessed by so many opposite moods and influences. I am afraid of you a little. I never know what you are going to do to me.
I feel, I cannot help but feel, that I am part of your life, now, you could not neglect me any more than you could your own soul. I consider you just as responsible for mine as you are for your own. I say this with no doubts, but know that it is true, and you must know it.
XVI. DEAR THYRSIS:
 
You certainly have a wonderful task in store for me, and I pray God to give me strength for it. I can see very plainly that you expect to find the essence of my soul better than yours, because it seems that you are making my task harder than yours.
Do you know, I have actually found myself asking, at times, with a certain defiant rage—if you were actually going to give love to your princess before you had made her suffer! So far you have not made her suffer at all. I had become quite excited over this idea—though perhaps I had no right to. I suppose it is all right, because she is an imaginary person, and you can endow her with all the perfections you please. She is triumphant and thrilling, and worthy of love—whereas I am just little Corydon, whom you have known all your life, and who is stupid and helpless, and impossible to imagine romances about! Is that the way of it?
XVII. MY DEAREST THYRSIS:
 
A long letter has just come to me. I always receive your letters with many palpitations, and by the time I get through reading, my cheeks are flaming. It is too bad it takes letters so long to go to and fro.
I have finally come to bear the attitude towards myself, that I would to a naughty child. I will have no nonsense, and all my absurdities and inefficiencies must be cured. I think I have come to know myself a little better within the last few days. I know that I have no right to quick victories, or any happiness at all, even your love. I tell you truly, if it were only possible, I would go away this minute—do you hear?—oh! to some lonely place, and then I would do something with myself. I want to be alone, alone—I want to be face to face with myself, and God, if possible! I have come to the conclusion that I can do anything I must do. I think (I am not sure) I could give you up, if I were obliged to, and go away by myself and try alone. If I do not have you, I must have solitude.
XVIII. MY DEAREST CORYDON:
 
Thinking about my work this morning, and how hard it was, and how much strength it would take, my thoughts turned to you, and I discovered, as never before, just how I like to think of you. It seemed to me that you were part of the raw material that I had to use; that I had mastered you, and was going to make you what you had to be. And there woke in my heart at those words a fierceness of purpose that I had never felt in my life before—I was quite mad with it; and you cried out to escape me, but I would not let you go, but held you right tightly in my arms. And so—I do not mean to let you go! I shall bear you away with me, and make you what I wish. And the promise of marriage that I make you is just this: not that I love you—I do not love you; but what I wish the woman to be whom I am to love—that I will make you!
And do not ever dare to ask me for any other promise, for you will not get it. You will come with this.
XIX. MY THYRSIS:
 
I had an iron grip at my heart just now, as I was trying to study. I had a foreboding of something—and then I came home and found your letter telling me I was yours, and I must. At last I may go to you the way I wish! My love, my love, I do not care what you are, or what you do to me, as long as I may go with you.
How I laugh at myself as I say it! You have mastered me to worship your life—not you. I shall not work for your love, I shall work to live. Our love will be one of the incidents of our life. Meanwhile, I may go with you, that is all that I say—I sing it. I may go with you, not to happiness, but to necessity!
And now that cursed German! It hangs over my head like a sword of Damocles I have heard of—though I don’t know why it was held over his head!
You think our love was settling into the cooing state! Dear me, Thyrsis, I hope I will not always have to yell to you over a foggy ocean!
XX. DEAR THYRSIS:
 
Can you imagine what it must be to be shut up in a little room on a rainy night, with the children and people screaming under your window? That is my position now.
I find myself hard to manage at times. I want to become discouraged or melancholy or disgusted, but I drive myself better than I used to. I even was happy a little for a few moments to-night. I was playing one of my piano-pieces, and I found myself imagining all sorts of things. But this happens very seldom, and only lasts for a moment. I often wonder at myself. Two months ago I did not love you one particle; I love you now, so that—so that it is impossible for me to do anything else. In fact I did not realize how much I loved you until that terrible moment when I read you did not love me. I saw how impossible it will be to cease to love you, no matter what you do to me. I do not know why it is; I simply know it is, and perhaps some day I may teach you how to love. I do not imagine you know how very well, at present—no, Thyrsis, I don’t.
I know your true self now, and I love it better than ever I loved the other. I say it with a certain grimness. I know you, your real self, and I love it.
Know, oh, my Beloved, that in the last three months you have grown to me from a boy into a man, into my husband! When I think of you as you were at first you seem a child compared to what you are now.
XXI. DEAREST LOVE:
 
Last night, as I went to sleep, I was thinking of you and our problem, and there were all sorts of uncertainties; but one thing I have to tell you, my Corydon—that it came to me how sweet and true, and how pure and good you have been; and I loved you very, very much indeed. I thought: I should like to tell her that, and ask her always to be so noble and unselfish. Can you not realize how all your deficiencies are as nothing to me, in the sight of that one unapproachable perfection? For my Corydon is all devotion and love, and pure, pure, maiden goodness! And there is quite a whole heart full of feeling for you in that, and I wish I had you here to tell you.
XXII. MY CORYDON:
 
I am coming more and more to realize myself, and what is the single faculty I have been given. I think of a dear clergyman friend I used to have, and I realize what a loving heart is—what it is to delight in a human soul for its own sake, and to be kind to it, fond of it. And I know that there could not be a man with less of that than I have. Certainly I know this, I never did love a soul for its own sake, and don’t think I could. I love beauty, and truth, and power, and I hate everything else, if it come across my way. If I had to live the life of that clergyman friend I should be insane in a month. I see this as something very hateful; but there is only one thing I can do, to see that I hate my own self more than I hate any other self—and work, work, for the thing I love.
You asked me once to tell you if your death would make any difference to me. If you were to die to-morrow I should feel that a sacred opportunity was gone out of my life, that all my efforts must have less result forever after. But I do not think I should stop working a day.
I love you because you are something upon which I may exert the force of my will. I honestly believe that the truest word, the nearest to my character, I ever spoke. If I care about you it is for one thing, and one only—because you are a soul hungry for life, because you are capable of sacrifice and high effort, because you are sensitive and eager. I love you and honor you for this; I take you to my bosom, I give all my life to your service; and I shall make you a perfect woman, or else kill you.
You must understand what I want; I want no concrete thing, no dozen languages to throw you into despair. I want effort, effort, effort! That’s all. And I believe that you might be a stronger soul than I at this moment, if only you chose to hunt yourself out and fight! That is truly what I feel about you, and that is why I love you.
XXIII. DEAREST THYRSIS:
 
I have no more to say, my precious one; I bow in joy before your will, your certainty, your power. Let it be so, I shall adore you as I so long to do.
You are giving me all I could ask for. What more could I wish from you, dear Thyrsis, than to know you will never leave my side? I will try not to do any more bemoaning of my shortcomings. To-night I reached a wonderful security and almost sublimity, until I could have fallen on my face and praised God for His mercy. I talked out loud to myself, I exhorted myself, I explained to myself what is my beauty and possibility in life—the reason for which I was born. I was quite lifted out of myself, by a conviction that came like a benediction, that the essence of my soul was good and pure, and that if anybody upon earth had the power to reach God, it was myself.
Dear God, how I have spent the years of my life! like an imbecile! But you—if you take me, I shall go mad—I shall love you like a tigress! I shall implore you to invent any way that will enable me to realize life! Oh, if you take me, how madly I shall love you! I fancy myself seeing you now, and I don’t know what I should do—I love you so dreadfully! I think of you, and everything about you seems so wondrously beautiful to me!
I almost have a feeling that I have no right to love you so much. Oh, tell me, do you want me to love you as I can? Already you seem part of me, mine—mine! And it is wonderful how you help me.
XXIV. Thyrsis:
I spent the whole day in the park without a bite to eat, because I did not want to take the trouble to come home after it, and I only had five cents. I have tried, oh, tried to control myself and make myself saner. I am seized with occasional fits of the horrors, and of wild cravings for you, until I could scream. It is so unbearable, and I almost want to die. Oh, but I do not want to die! My imagination has become so fevered in the last few days—if I do not see you soon, I know not what will become of me!
I have never loved you so wildly—though I have always longed for you. I sometimes feel now as if my brain were utterly wrecked. I know not what is the matter; I gasp, when I think of you. I am convinced of heaven and hell almost in the same breath—experience each in rapid succession. One touch of your hand and one look, I think would cure me. I seem as if in a thunder-storm—pitchy blackness with flashes of light—and in the flashes I see you, my beloved!
XXV. Thyrsis:
I am atrociously weary of being able to depend upon myself not at all; but oh, how marvellously sweet and good you are to me! I shall never be able to pay you for your help!
Dear Heaven, what a cup of bitterness I have drunk, since I last saw you! Dearest, you have really torn me to pieces, unwittingly. But now I am healed, and I may go on in your blessed sight, with my terrors gone forever.
And then I actually wonder if you have an earthly form! It will be very strange to see you and touch you, I sometimes wake up with a start at the thought of it!
XXVI. Thyrsis:
Here I am, the most restless and miserable and uncomfortable and pining of creatures—a very Dido! Are you satisfied, now that you have made it almost impossible for me to put my mind on anything but you, you? I spend hours reading one page of my book.
I was reading peaceably just now, and I suddenly thought how I would feel if I saw you coming in at the door. I started and could hardly believe that I will really see you—in something besides visions. When night comes I usually get fidgety, and can hardly realize I do not need to worry over phantoms. Then I go on with “Classicism and Romanticism in Music,” and I think of you—and read a line and think of you! You see, it doesn’t do for me to be too intense, for I just devour myself, and that is all. My only idea of a vent is to knock my head against something.
I suppose it is the inevitable result of caring for someone you cannot see. Here I might be studying now, but what do I do? I go around seeking rest—and I write you a dozen times a day, and use up all the stamps in the house.
Oh well, I dare say if you wished me to love you, you have accomplished your purpose most successfully. There is nothing in life but you, and to suddenly acquire a new self is most startling, and something hard to believe. Thyrsis, I simply cannot realize that I may go to you and find peace and security.
XXVII. MY DEAREST CORYDON:
 
I have just a few words to say. I have two weeks left in which to shake off my shoulders the fearful animal that has been tearing me. For just three weeks to-day, not a line written!
The task seems almost beyond my powers. God, will people ever know how I have worked over this book!
But unless you develop some new doubt, or I persist in writing letters, I ought to get it done now. I shall see you as soon as I have finished, and meantime I shall write no letters.
XXVIII. DEAR THYRSIS:
 
I would give a great deal to let you know how I have struggled and suffered.
I have had almost more than I could bear—the more horrible because the more unreasonable. You must know it. If it disturbs you, please put the letter away until a favorable time. I account my trouble greatly physical—I have never been in such a nervous state. The murky despair that has come over me—that I have writhed and struggled in, as in the clutches of some fiend! It seems to me I have experienced every torment of each successive stage of Dante’s Inferno. I know what is the emotion of a soul in all the bloom and hope of youth, condemned to die.
I woke up in the middle of the night last night—and felt as if a monster sat by to throw a black cloth over me and smother me. I got up and shook myself, and my heart was beating violently.
I managed to get myself free. This morning I am better. God in Heaven only knows—I would rather be torn limb from limb, yes, honestly, than endure the blackness of soul that I have had through all these years of strife and failure by myself.
Dearest Thyrsis:
Perhaps if I have written to you a few words, I shall be able to put my mind on study—as so far I have not done. I actually to-night have been indulging in all sorts of romantic moods about you. I felt in a singing mood, and when I came up from dinner I put on a beautiful dress, just for fun, and I looked quite radiant. I dreamed of you, and imagined that you were at my feet, in true Romeo fashion—and I was your Juliet. I imagined—I couldn’t help thinking of this, and I knew I ought to be doing something else! Oh, but how I want a poor taste of joy! You were my Romeo to-night—you were beautiful and young and loving; and well, I had one dream of youth and happiness before my miseries begin.
I have felt that we were very near to each other lately. You have shown me the tenderness of your heart, and I love you quite rapturously. I love your goodness, your sympathy—perhaps when I see you I can tell you!
XXX. DEAREST THYRSIS:
 
I received a postal just now, saying that you were coming soon. I had my usual queer faintness. It was like receiving word from the dead—it seemed such centuries—aeons—since I heard from you! I send you this batch of notes I have written you at various times, a sort of mental itinerary, for my mind has traveled into all sorts of queer places, back and forth. I tell you that without your continual influence, I am lost in doubt and uncertainty. Please try to understand these notes and my fits of love and fear.
XXXI. DEAR THYRSIS:
 
I am in one of my cast-iron moods, this morning—in a fighting mood, I do not care with whom or what. You, even you, have not altogether understood me—you have often given me a dog’s portion. I have been a slave, a cowering kitten before you, and you (unwittingly I know) have done much to destroy all my courage and hope and love—by what you call making me aware of your higher self. Fortunately I know what your higher self is, quite as well as you do, if not a little better—and I know that it is the self that most strengthens my love and courage, the self that most fills me with life. I have a right to life as well as you, and a right to the love in you that most inspires me. I feel I am capable of judging this, in spite of all my lack of education, and my inability to follow you in your intellectual life.
I have thought lately that you were able to make yourself believe that you were anything you wished to think yourself. Whenever you wring my heart and deprive me of strength, I shall go somewhere alone, and when I have controlled myself, come back to you.
You say you are master—but it must be master of the right. I want strength, and why you should think it right ever to have helped to throw me into more despair, I do not know. The reason I have written all this is because such ideas have come to me lately, and a fear that sometimes you might resort to your unloving methods, with the thought of its being right. I tell you I would rather stay at home, than ever go through with some of the pangs you have cost me, in what you called your higher moods. You must not gainsay me, that I am also capable of respecting high moods and bowing before them; but it would seem to me that they are only high if they are a source of inspiration and joy to me.
Because we love each other, would that be any reason why we must dote upon each other, or sink from our high resolves? I cannot see why our love for each other should not always be a means of our reaching our higher selves. You need not answer this letter—but when you come back, tell me whether what I say impresses you as being right or wrong—if there is not some justification in it. But perhaps I should wait. I have no right to disturb you now.
XXXII. THYRSIS:
 
I woke up this morning with the feeling that I did not love you. That same thing has happened to me two or three times, and I do not understand it.
It must be because at the present moment you do not love me! You are writing your book, and telling yourself that you cannot love me as you ought! Is this so? It is only a surmise on my part, and I do not know, but I should not be surprised if you were. I only know that the one thing that can bring us together is love, and I do not love you now. Perhaps you can explain it to me. I write this absolutely without emotion.
I tell you there have been things horribly wrong about you. You have done anything but inspire love in my heart—you have never seen me with love in my heart. Until lately, I never have felt any love for you; before, I simply compelled myself to think I loved you, because my life seemed to depend upon it. There have been many times when, as I look back, you seem to me to have been base.
Well may you preach, while you are alone, and are monarch of yourself. I shall have to have more of a chance than has ever come to me, before I will bear your displeasure or your exhortations. If you come to me and speak to me of the high, proud self that I must reach, every vestige of love for you will leave my heart, and I would as soon marry a stone pillar!
Great Heaven, what strange moods I have! I picture our meeting each other, unmoved by love; you determined, energetic, indifferent to all things, myself included; and I disappointed, but with a hardness in my heart—no tears!
I am indulging now in the most lifeless and gloomy of broodings; if you do not come back to me, the only soul I can love, if you are not joyful and strong, sincere, sympathetic, and loving, all of these—I shall know it is a farce for me to ever hope to gain any life with you. I do not believe that any woman can grow without love, and a great deal of it. Why do you suppose I am writing all this—I, who have felt such deep and true love for you? I have no courage—the dampness of the day has settled into my soul—and I shall be joyless until there is no more cursed doubt of you and your love for me.
XXXIII. Dear Corydon: Against resolutions, I am writing to you again. I thought of you—there is a boat up the lake to-day with some hunters, and if I finish this letter, I can send it in by them as they pass. I have many things to tell you, and you must think about them.
This is one of my paralyzing letters. It will reach you Monday. I can’t tell where I may be then. I have been wrestling with the end of the book, and I am wild with rage at my impotence. The fact has come to me that no amount of will is enough, because all my life is cowardly and false. I have found myself wanting to sneak through this work, and come home and enjoy myself; and you can’t sneak with God, and that’s all. I cannot come home beaten, and so here I am, still struggling—and with snow on the ground, and the shack so cold that I sit half in the fire-place.
I think of you, and at times when my soul is afire, I imagine I can do anything. I see that you are helpless, but I think that I can change your whole being, and make you what I wish. But then that feeling dies out, and I think of you as you are, and with despair. I do not allude to any of your “deficiencies”—music, learning, and other stuff. I mean your life-force, or your lack of it. I see that you have learned nothing of the unspeakable, unattainable thing for which I am panting. And it has come to me that I dare not marry you, that I should be binding my life to ruin. My head is surging with plans, and a whole infinity of future, and I simply cannot carry any woman with me on this journey.
As I say this, I see the tears of despair in your eyes. I can only tell you what I am—God made me for an artist, not a lover! I have not deep feelings—I do not care for human suffering; I can work, that is all. Art is no respecter of persons, and neither am I—I labor for something which is not of self, and requires denial of self. And as I think about you, the feeling comes to me that it is not this you want, that I should make you utterly wretched if I married you. You love love; you do not wish to fling yourself into a struggle such as my life must be. I see that in all your letters—your terror of this highest self of mine. If you married me, you would have to fight a battle that would almost kill you. You would have to wear your heart out, night and day—you would have to lose yourself and your feelings—fling away everything, and live in self-contempt and effort. You would have to know it—I can’t help it—that I love life, and that to human hearts I owe no allegiance; that to me they are simply impatience and vexation.
Do you want such a life? If you can learn to love it for what it is—a wild, unnatural, but royal life—very well. If you are coming to me with pleading eyes, secretly wishing for affection, and in terror of me when you don’t get it, then God help you, that is all!
You are a child, and you can not dream what I mean. But every day I learn something more of a great savage force of mine, that will stand out against the rest of this world, that is burning me up, that is driving me mad. One of two things it will do to you—it will make you the same kind of creature, or it will tear the soul out of you. Do you understand that? And nothing will stop it—it cares for nothing in the world but the utterance of itself! And if you wish to marry me, it will be with no promise of mine save to wreak it upon you! To take you, and make you just such a creature, kill or cure—nothing else! Not one instant’s patience—but just one insistent, frantic demand that you succeed—and fiery, writhing disgust with you when you do not succeed—disgust that will make you scream—and make you live! Do you understand this—and do you get any idea of the temper behind this? And how it seems to you, I don’t know—it is the only kind of truth I am capable of; I shall simply fling naked the force of my passionate, raging will, and punish you with it each instant of your life—until you understand it, and love it, and worship it, as I do.
Now, I don’t know what you will think about this letter—and I don’t care. It is here—and you must take it. It does not come to you for criticism, any more than it would come for criticism to the world. It will rule the world. If I marry you I must live all my soul before you, and you must share it; if you think you can do this without first having suffered, having first torn loose your own crushed self, you are mistaken. But remember this—I shall demand from you just as much fire as I give; you may say you cannot, you may weep and say you cannot—I will gnash my teeth at you and say you must.
Perhaps I’m a fool to think I can do this. At any rate, I don’t want to do anything else; I am a fool to think of doing anything else, and you to let me.
I cannot be false to my art without having a reaction of disgust, and you cannot marry me, unless you understand that. When I sat down to this letter I called myself mad for trying to tie my life to yours. Now I am interested in you again. You may wish to make this cast still; and oh, of course I shall drop back as usual, and you’ll be happy, and I’ll be your “Romeo”!
Ugh—how I hated that letter! “Romeo” indeed! Wouldn’t we have a fine sentimental time—you with your prettiest dress on, and I holding you in my arms and telling you how much I loved you!
XXXIV. MY DEAR THYRSIS:
 
I shall be your wife. This thought takes hold of me firmly and calmly, and I have no tears, nor fright, nor uncertainty. I suffered, of course, while I read your letter, and my self-control toppled, but no “tears of despair” came into my eyes. I am not despairing—I shall be your wife, and I shall feel that for many years one of my greatest efforts will be to prevent you from becoming my “Romeo.” I am very weak and human, and you become that easily—do you know it?
Rejoice, I have gained my self-control, and well, I am going to be your wife. Or else (it comes to me quite as a matter of course, without any feeling of it being unnatural or unusual) I shall not care to live. But after all, I do not fear that I shall die—I shall be your wife. You may even gainsay it, you may even tell me I shall ruin your life, you may even tell me that you refuse to take me—but sooner or later I shall be your wife. I say it with perfect certainty, and almost composure.
It is unfortunate that at such a time as this I cannot see you—it is quite cruelly wicked. There is so much to say, not all in your favor either. Some day I shall learn to bring out and keep before me that higher self of yours, which now I do not fear. I also have a higher self, though it does not show itself very often. It is a self which can meet that self of yours without flinching, but which loves it, and stretches out its arms to it—which knows that without that self of yours it cannot, will not live. It is hard to realize such a thing, but I beseech you no longer, I am going with you. You see now, I have no fear of your not taking me—I simply have no fear of this.
If I had, I could not write you this way. But you have been the means of showing me I can awaken, and that I was not meant to live the life of the people around me. Chance tried hard to put me to sleep forever, but you have roused me. Dear me, how I smile to myself at my confidence! But I am so sure—this feeling would not be in my heart if it had no meaning! I was not meant for this life I am leading. I am not afraid because I have no proof that I am a genius, and no prospect of being one at present. I do not know whether what you have must come as an inspiration direct from God, I do not know whether I am capable of winning any of this life that you are seeking; but I do know this—I’m going to have the chance to try, and you are going to give it to me. Do you suppose I could tell you that I am willing to stay at home and let you leave me?
I have not even any fear now of your wishing to leave me. Why, I wouldn’t hold my life at a pennyworth if you were out of it!
“You are my only means of breathing, you fool,” I thought. I sometimes wonder how you could think of leaving me, when I feel as I do at present. I ask myself why it is that you know nothing of it, and why it does not make you put out your hand in gladness to me—how you could write me that all my letters showed you I did not want to struggle to lead your life!
My words are failing me now—this is probably the reason you know nothing about me.
Besides, when I have written you before this, I have been worrying and doubting and afraid. I am none of these now; and I do not believe I am deluding myself—in fact I know I am not. I shall be your wife. It is indeed a pity I cannot talk to you now—yes, a very great pity. It is also rather incomprehensible, that you can imagine leaving me now. And all my letters have told you that I wish to be petted and cuddled, did they? If you were here, I do not know that it would do any good to give my feelings vent, it would profit me nothing to strike you, and what could I do? I cannot hate you—it is not natural that one should hate one’s husband.
Some day, oh, some day, I tell myself—you will no lonnger play and trifle with me and my soul!
Did you really think you are going to put me to sleep again? Surely my life is something; and you have given me some reason for its existence. I can hardly tell you what I wish to say; people run in and out, and I am bothered—I suppose this is one of my tasks. But do you not see that you have taken the responsibility of a soul into your hands? I cannot live without you. What is it—do creatures go around the world struggling and saying they must live, and are they only pitiful fools for trying?
And are you one of God’s chosen ones? Will you tell me, “Corydon, you simply cannot live my life—you are not fit?” Dear Thyrsis, I actually believe that if you should tell me that now, I should laugh with joy, for I would see that I had gained one victory, that of proving to you your own weakness and stupidity. And I should not let you discourage me. I should throw my arms around your neck, and cling to you until you had promised to take me. After all, it is a small boon to ask the privilege of trying to live, it cannot but be a glory to you to help me; and if I do not make you waste your time or money, how can I hinder you?
Ask yourself how you have treated me—have I not suffered a little? Though I may have been miserably weak, have I not now a little courage? Why do the moments blind you so, that you can speak to me as though I were a sawdust doll?
There is only one thing that I will let myself do. I know that you are strong and brave, and that I can be if I go with you; and I am going with you—there simply is no other alternative—for I love you! Yes, dear, I saw it very plainly as I read your letter to-day. I seem to feel very differently about it all now. I know we cannot sit still and love each other—this costs me no pang. You need not love me one bit; I may simply belong to you, we may simply belong to each other.
I see how I fall into blindness of the high things at home. How almost impossible it is for me to do anything, while I have the earthly ties of love! I study—but how? How is it possible to live the physical life of other people—to be sympathetic and agreeable and conciliatory, and gain anything for your own soul? How is such a creature as myself to get what it wants, unless it goes away where there are no contrary and disturbing influences—where it has no ties, no obligations? The souls that have won, how did they do it—did they go alone, or did they stay in the parlor and serve tea?
Such thoughts as these would make me grovel at your feet, if need be, in an agony of prayer. The means, I cry—and you are the means! What is there for me, then, but to beseech you to have faith in me? I suppose, as yet, you have little or no cause—though once or twice I have risen to you, even though perhaps you did not know it. I am almost happy now—for I feel that this useless strife is at an end, this craving and wondering if you wish to leave me. And for all that, I despise you, too—for your blind and wanton cruelty in wishing to crush what you have created! How do you expect God to value your soul, when you so lightly value mine?
But after all, will it help me to beseech you? The thing I honor in you is your desire to be right—and I know that you will act toward me as your sense of right prompts you. You will act toward me as you feel you must do, to be true. Yes, be true to yourself, please; I am happy to trust in yourself so. If you believe that I will mar your life, I do not wish to go I with you. I do not know why, but I feel that something has come to me to prevent my despair from returning; I shall take care of my soul—there must be something for me in this life. I have a feeling that perhaps you will think I am writing this last mute acceptance of your will, without knowing what I am doing. But I know that I shall struggle without you, I shall not die.
And I wish that you would do one thing—see me as soon as you can; let it be early in the morning, and it shall be decided on that day whether I am to marry you or not. I shall leave you, not to see you again—or knowing that I am to be your wife. I am sick unto death of fuming and sighing, tears and fears.
What will you do, Thyrsis? I cannot write any more.
I unfold the letter again. What, in the name of God, are you going to do?