Letter XVI

But, Dearest: When I think of you I never question whether what I think
would be true or false in the eyes of others. All that concerns you seems
to go on a different plane where evidence has no meaning or existence:
where nobody exists or means anything, but only we two alone, engaged in
bringing about for ourselves the still greater solitude of two into one.
Oh, Beloved, what a company that will be! Take me in your arms, fasten me
to your heart, breathe on me. Deny me either breath or the light of day: I
am yours equally, to live or die at your word. I shut my eyes to feel your
kisses falling on me like rain, or still more like sunshine,--yet most of
all like kisses, my own dearest and best beloved!

Oh, we two! how wonderful we seem! And to think that there have been
lovers like us since the world began: and the world not able to tell us
one little word of it:--not well, so as to be believed--or only along
with sadness where Fate has broken up the heavens which lay over some
pair of lovers. Oenone's cry, "Ah me, my mountain shepherd," tells us
of the joy when it has vanished, and most of all I get it in that song
of wife and husband which ends:-"Not a word for you,
Not a lock or kiss,
Good-by.
We, one, must part in two;
Verily death is this:
I must die."