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.