e stages of manhood, from the utmost wantonness to the
most refined spirituality. In you alone I first saw true pride and
true feminine humility.

The most extreme suffering, if it is only surrounded, without
separating us, would seem to me nothing but a charming antithesis to
the sublime frivolity of our marriage. Why should we not take the
harshest whim of chance for an excellent jest and a most frolicsome
caprice, since we, like our love, are immortal? I can no longer say
_my_ love and _your_ love; they are both alike in their perfect
mutuality. Marriage is the everlasting unity and alliance of our
spirits, not only for what we call this world and that world, but for
the one, true, indivisible, nameless, endless world of our entire
being, so long as we live. Therefore, if it seemed the proper time, I
would drain with you a cup of poison, just as gladly and just as
easily as that last glass of champagne we drank together, when I said:
"And so let us drink out the rest of our lives." With these words I
hurriedly quaffed the wine, before its noble spirit ceased to sparkle.
And so I say again, let us live and love. I know you would not wish to
survive me; you would rather follow your dying husband into his
coffin. Gladly and lovingly would you descend into the burning abyss,
even as the women of India do, impelled by a mad law, the cruel,
constraining purpose of which desecrates and destroys the most
delicate sanctities of the will.

On the other side, perhaps, longing will be more completely realized.
I often wonder over it; every thought, and whatever else is fashioned
within us, seems to be complete in itself, as single and indivisible
as a person. One thing crowds out another, and that which just now was
near and present soon sinks back into obscurity. And then again come
moments of sudden and universal clarity, when several such spirits of
the inner world completely fuse together into a wonderful wedlock, and
many a forgotten bit of our ego shines forth in a new light and even
illuminates the darkness of the future with its bright lustre. As it
is in a small way, so is it also, I think, in a large way. That which
we call a life is for the complete, inner, immortal man only a single
idea, an indivisible feeling. And for him there come, too, moments of
the profoundest and fullest consciousness, when all lives fall
together and mingle and separate in a different way. The time is
coming when we two shall behold in one