ry of her
nature, apart from love? To claim feeling as a right! Why, it blooms of
itself under the sun of love, and shrivels to death under the cold blast
of distaste and aversion! Let love guard his own rights!

Oh! my noble Renee! I understand you now. I bow to your greatness,
amazed at the depth and clearness of your insight. Yes, the woman who
has not used the marriage ceremony, as I have done, merely to legalize
and publish the secret election of her heart, has nothing left but to
fly to motherhood. When earth fails, the soul makes for heaven!

One hard truth emerges from all that you have said. Only men who are
really great know how to love, and now I understand the reason of this.
Man obeys two forces--one sensual, one spiritual. Weak or inferior men
mistake the first for the last, whilst great souls know how to clothe
the merely natural instinct in all the graces of the spirit. The very
strength of this spiritual passion imposes severe self-restraint and
inspires them with reverence for women. Clearly, feeling is sensitive
in proportion to the calibre of the mental powers generally, and this
is why the man of genius alone has something of a woman's delicacy.
He understands and divines woman, and the wings of passion on which he
raises her are restrained by the timidity of the sensitive spirit. But
when the mind, the heart, and the senses all have their share in the
rapture which transports us--ah! then there is no falling to earth,
rather it is to heaven we soar, alas! for only too brief a visit.

Such, dear soul, is the philosophy of the first three months of my
married life. Felipe is angelic. Without figure of speech, he is another
self, and I can think aloud with him. His greatness of soul passes my
comprehension. Possession only attaches him more closely to me, and he
discovers in his happiness new motives for loving me. For him, I am the
nobler part of himself. I can foresee that years of wedded life, far
from impairing his affection, will only make it more assured, develop
fresh possibilities of enjoyment, and bind us in more perfect sympathy.
What a delirium of joy!

It is part of my nature that pleasure has an exhilarating effect on me;
it leaves sunshine behind, and becomes a part of my inner being. The
interval which parts one ecstasy from another is like the short night
which marks off our long summer days. The sun which flushed the mountain
tops with warmth in setting finds them hardly cold when