to ease my heart until you come. And always as I write I listen for the
sound of your dear footsteps. For many successive days I had found our
trysting place a veritable desert. I seemed to have lost my heart's way to
you; and in proportion to my bewilderment, life became more and more
intolerable. I had the desperate sensation of one who is about to be lost
in a waste land, and I felt that I could not live through the frightful
loneliness of such an experience. Yesterday again I failed to find the
comfort of your occult presence when I went into the wood. I was filled
with consternation, and when the night came I lay tossing in a sleepless
fever. Unless I knew once more in my heart that you loved me, I felt that
I could no longer endure life. So I lay far into the night. At last in
desperation I arose from my bed, slipped on my shoes and the big cloak
that you will remember, and fled away to our tree in the forest, pursued
by a thousand shadows. For indeed I am usually afraid of the dark; it is
like a silence to me--your silence, Philip--and I fear it because I do not
know what it contains. But I had got one of father's wrestling-Jacob's
moods upon me by this time, and if Mahomet's mountain had come booming by
I should not have been deterred from my purpose. But do you know that
there is more life in a little forest when darkness falls than in a big
town? and that every living thing there recognises you as an intruder with
warning calls from tree to tree? I had not more than cast myself upon the
ground to sob out all my griefs to whatever gods would listen, when a
sleepy little robin just overhead called up to his mistress the tone of my
trouble. The young leaves whispered it, the boughs swept low about me, and
the winds carried messages of it away into the heavens, so that suddenly
the whole night knew of my woe and pitied me.

I know not how long I lay there staring up at the blue abyss of stars
through the grizzly shades of night. I only know that my face was wet with
tears and that I seemed to tremble upon the brink of a long life's
despair. And oh! Philip I never _loved_ you so,--not only with my heart
and lips, but with my soul. And it was my soul that went out in a prayer
to you to come. I remembered not only the dear ways you have of folding me
into your arms and making me surpassingly happy, so against my own will,
but I remembered the silent young sage in his upper chamber, and I felt
that indeed it was to th