manitarianism. My smoke arises. I have been
consumed, and now I write you merely in the spirit,--you see I am learning
_your_ incantations.

But being disembodied, I may at least be truthful. Besides, it is
sometimes wiser to make long-distance confessions than to tell the truth
face to face. Then listen, dear Heart, it was not Philip, but poor Jessica
who was vanquished that day as we walked through the lanes and fields
around Morningtown. I do not know how to tell you, but of a sudden I am
becoming learned in all the joys and griefs of this world. There is a
sweetheart reason for them all, lying buried somewhere. For love is
nature's vocation in us, I think. We cannot escape it. Our vision is
already love-lit when the prince comes. All he needs do is to step within
the radiant circle. Oh, my Heart, is it not terrible when you think of it,
that we may keep our wills, but our hearts we cannot keep! They go from us
happy pilgrims, and return unto us old and grey, sometimes lost and
forsaken.

You came so fast upon the heels of your other letter that I did not have
time to put on my shield and buckler before you were here in the flesh,
formidable, real, cloven hoof and all! I was frightened and
militant,--frightened lest you should win from me the freedom of my heart,
militant for the freedom of my will. Well, at least I kept the latter, but
I can tell you, it is making a poor bagpipe tune of the victory. When I
went down to you that first evening, it was like going to meet an enemy,
dear and terrible. I was divided between two impulses, both equally savage
1 think, either to stab or to fall upon your breast and weep. But you will
bear me witness that my greeting in reality was conventionally awkward. In
any case, your eyes would have saved me. They are wide and deep, and as
you stood here by the window where I am writing now, with both my hands
clasped in yours, I saw a bright beam leap up far within them like candles
suddenly lighted in an open grave. You had not come merely to make peace
with me, you had my capitulation ready, but I knew then I should never
sign. Let the dead bury their dead; as for me, I am too much alive to die
long and amicably with any ghost of a philosopher in the "upper chamber."
I do not even belong in the "lower rooms," but outside under the skies of
our ever green world. I have already determined that if there is nothing
going on in heaven when I am translated thither, I will ask to be changed