I learned during my three
days in Morningtown? First of all, I discovered that you are clothed with
wonderful beauty. In a dim way I knew this before, but the full mystery of
your loveliness was not revealed to me until this third time. Can it be
that love has transformed you a little and added grace to grace, or is it
only my vision that has been purged of its earthly dulness? I could love a
homely woman whose spirit was fair, but to love one who is altogether
beautiful, in whose perfect grace I can find no spot or blemish--that is
the miracle of my blessedness. There was a strange light in your eyes that
haunts me yet. Such a light I have seen on a lonely pool when the evening
sunlight slanted upon it from over the brown hills of autumn, but nowhere
else. My soul would bathe in that pure water and be baptised into the new
faith.

For my faith, of which I boasted so valiantly, has changed since I have
seen you. Faith, I had thought, was a form of insight into the illusion of
earthly things, of transient joys and fears. And always a little dread
would creep into my heart lest love, too, should prove to be such an
illusion, the last great deception of all, binding the bewildered soul in
a web of phantom desires. So I still felt as I walked with you that first
evening out into the circle of your trees. And there, dear Jessica, in the
waiting silence and the grey shadows of that seclusion I put my arms about
you and would have drawn you to my heart. Ah, shall I not remember the
wild withdrawing of your eyes as I stooped over your face! And then with a
cry of defiance and one swift bound, you tore yourself loose from me and
ran like a frightened dryad deeper into the forest. That was a mad chase,
and forever and forever I shall see your lithe form darting on before me
through the mingled shadow and light. And when at last I caught you and
held you fast, shall I not remember how you panted and fluttered against
me like a bird in the first terror of captivity! And then, suddenly, you
were still, and looked up into my face, and in your eyes I beheld the
wonder of a strange mystery which no words can name. Only I knew that my
dread was forever at end. It was for a second--nay, an eternity, I
think--as if we two were rapt out of the world, out of ourselves, into
some infinite abysm of life. It was as if the splendour of the apocalypse
broke upon us, and poured upon our eyes the ineffable whiteness of heaven.
I knew in that insta