Letter LVIII

No, no, I cannot read it! What have I done that you will not
come to me? They are mad here, telling me to be calm, that I am not to
go to you. I too am out of my mind--except that I love you. I know
nothing except that. Beloved, only on my lips will I take my dismissal
from yours: not God himself can claim you from me till you have done me
that justice. Kiss me once more, and then, if you can, say we must part.
You cannot!--Ah, come here where my heart is, and you cannot!

Have I never told you enough how I love you? Dearest, I have no words
for all my love: I have no pride in me. Does not this alone tell
you?--You are sending me away, and I cry to you to spare me. Can I love
you more than that? What will you have of me that I have not given? Oh,
you, the sun in my dear heavens--if I lose you, what is left of me?
Could you break so to pieces even a woman you did not love? And me you
do love,--you do. Between all this denial of me, and all this
silence of words that you have put your name to, I see clearly that you
are still my lover.--Your writing breaks with trying not to say it: you
say again and again that there is no fault in me. I swear to you,
dearest, there is none, unless it be loving you: and how can you mean
that? For what are you and I made for unless for each other? With all
our difference people tell us we are alike. We were shaped for each
other from our very birth. Have we not proved it in a hundred days of
happiness, which have lifted us up to the blue of a heaven higher than
any birds ever sang? And now you say--taking on you the blame for the
very life-blood in us both--that the fault is yours, and that your fault
is to have allowed me to love you and yourself to love me!