Letter LX

Oh, could all this silence teach me the one thing I am longing to know!--
why am I unworthy of you? If I cannot be your wife, why cannot I see you
still,--serve you if possible? I would be grateful.

You meant to be generous; and wishing not to wound me, you said that
"there was no fault" in me. I realize now that you would not have said
that to the woman you still loved. And now I am never to know what part
in me is hateful to you. I must live with it because you would not tell
me the truth!

Every day tells me I am different from the thing I wish to be--your
love, the woman you approve.

I love you, I love you! Can I get no nearer to you ever for all this
straining? If I love you so much, I must be moving toward what you would
have me be. In our happiest days my heart had its growing pains,--growing
to be as you wished it.

Dear, even the wisest make mistakes, and the tenderest may be hard
without knowing: I do not think I am unworthy of you, if you knew all.

Writing to you now seems weakness: yet it seemed peace to come in here
and cry to you. And when I go about I have still strength left, and try
to be cheerful. Nobody knows, I think nobody knows. No one in the house
is made downcast because of me. How dear they are, and how little I can
thank them! Except to you, dearest, I have not shown myself selfish.