Letter LVI

My Own Own Love: You have given me a spring day before the buds begin,--
the weather I have been longing for! I had been quite sad at heart these
cold wet days, really down;--a treasonable sadness with you still
anywhere in the world (though where in the world have you been?). Spring
seemed such a long way off over the bend of it, with you unable to come;
and it seems now another letter of yours has got lost. (Write it again,
dearest,--all that was in it, with any blots that happened to come:--there
was a dear smudge in to-day's, with the whirlpool mark of your thumb quite
clear on it,--delicious to rest my face against and feel you there.) And so back to my spring weather: all in a moment you gave me a whole
week of the weather I had longed after. For you say the sun has been
shining on you: and I would rather have it there than here if it refuses
to be in two places at once. Also my letters have pleased you. When they
do, I feel such a proud mother to them! Here they fly quick out of the
nest; but I think sometimes they must come to you broken-winged, with
so much meant and all so badly put.

How can we ever, with our poor handful of senses, contrive to express
ourselves perfectly? Perhaps,--I don't know:--dearest, I love you! I
kiss you a hundred times to the minute. If everything in the world were
dark round us, could not kisses tell us quite well all that we wish to
know of each other?--me that you were true and brave and so beautiful
that a woman must be afraid looking at you:--and you that I was just my
very self,--loving and--no! just loving: I have no room for anything
more! You have swallowed up all my moral qualities, I have none left: I
am a beggar, where it is so sweet to beg.--Give me back crumbs of
myself! I am so hungry, I cannot show it, only by kissing you a hundred
times.