es
and pleadings of love? Death and love are the very antipodes of our
existence, one would say. And yet I do not know; I feel nothing
incongruous in linking the twain together. Love, too, breaks open the
barriers of our poor personality that the breath of the infinite may blow
in upon us. I cannot say how it is with others, but so it is with me: love
lays a hand upon me, and instantly the discords of the world are hushed in
my ears, the little desires and fears that trouble me are shamed into
silence, and I am rapt away into the infinitely great heart that throbs at
the centre of all. It is strange, but life itself seems to pass away in
the presence of this power that is the creator of life. I speak darkly,
but my words have a meaning. And, dear sweetheart, be not afraid that you
shall be left without a lover; that I shall bereave you! Do you think for
an instant that I can cease to love? I cannot understand this war between
your heart and your will; am I very stupid? Surely when I come to you, I
shall bring this contention to an end, and you--it hath not entered into
the heart of man to conceive what you shall give me. Out of the
conclusions of death into the prophecies of love! I am filled with
wondering.

You shall hear more hereafter of poor Jack, our adopted child.

XXVI

JESSICA TO PHILIP

MY DEAR PHILIP:

See how you shame me! For this long while I have wished to begin my
letters thus, but I waited, hoping you would entreat me to do so. I
expected you to provide an excuse. I thought my own pleasure would wear
the genial air of a concession to your wishes. Indeed, the way you wait
for me to be obliged to do such things of my own accord, fills me with
superstitious anxieties. It is as if you had some unfair foreknowledge of
the natural order of events. You would take things for granted, and thus
produce an hypnotic effect by your convictions so strong as to compel my
conformity. But I console myself with the reflection that all this is
mental. You terrify only my intelligence with your strange sorcery. And
for this reason I shall always escape your bondage, for I am too wise to
concede my familiar territory to such an overbearing foreign power.

However, I must not forget the prime object I have in writing this letter.
It is to tell you that the little box of childish things, which you must
have received already and wondered at, are _not_ for the literary editor
of _The Gazette_, but for Jack, sent