h you to forget,--only that
it is best for us both to forget now if we can.

XLIII

PHILIP TO JESSICA

MY DEAR JESSICA:

My first impulse on reading your letter was to come immediately to
Morningtown and carry you away by storm; but second thoughts have
prevailed and I am writing merely to bid you good-bye. For, after all, if
I came, what could I do? I would not see you clandestinely and so mingle
deceit with our love, and I could not see you in your father's house while
he feels as he does. It would be fruitless too; you have come to the
meeting of ways and have chosen. I think you have chosen wrong, for the
world belongs to the young and not to the old. Life is ours with all the
prophecy and hopes of the future. Ah, what mockery lurked in those words
we read together in the shadow of your beloved trees, while your heart lay
in my hands fluttering like a captive bird:

So let us live and love till life be out,
And let the greybeards wag and flout.

And now dear Love, only one phrase of all that poem shall ring in my
ears,--that solemn _nox perpetua_, that long unending night, for every joy
you promised. Ah, would you have thrust me away so easily if I had not
seemed to you wrapt up in a strange shadow life into which no reality of
passion could enter? And was your love, too, only a shadow? God help me
then! Yet I would not reproach you, for, after all, the choice must have
cost you a weary pain. I have brought only misery to you, and you have
brought only misery to me--and this is the fruit of love's battle with
religion. Do you remember the story of Iphigenia in Lucretius and that
resounding line, "So much of ill religion could persuade"? Do you know
Landor's telling of that story, "O father! I am young and very happy"? And
so, our story has been made one with the long tragedy of life and of the
poets; and the bitterness of all this evil wrought by religion has
troubled my brain till I know not what to say. Only this, sweet girl, that
no tears of separation and long waiting can wash away the love I bear you.
And, yes, I will not believe that you can forget me. Come to me when you
will, now or many years hence, and the chamber of my heart shall be
garnished and ready to receive you, the latch hanging from the door, and
within, on the hearth, the fire burning unquenched and unquenchable. Will
you remember this? There is no woman in the whole earth to me, but
Jessica. It will