when your letter came this morning, I took just a
peep inside to see if it was good, and then hurried away to our forest to
enjoy it, for I always feel more at home with you there. And although the
season is so far advanced that the whole earth is chilled and desolate, my
heart was like the springtide, swelling with gladness. Joy reached to my
vagabond heels, and I had much ado to maintain the resignation gait of a
minister's daughter through the village streets. And once out of sight I
kissed my hand quickly over my shoulder till my face burned. For had you
not promised to attend me? "I will wrap you about with fancies and
dreams," you said. I was like a young-lady comet drawing after me a
luminous trail of love. I began to comprehend the advantages of my
position, to rejoice in my sacrifice. I caught the finer aspiration of
love, like one who lays down his life and finds it again in nobler forms.
Brave, good father, this thing that you have revealed to me is like a
sweet eternity. It neither begins nor ends: only we do that. When our time
comes we are swept into the current of it, happy, predestined atoms, and
afterwards we are lost out of it like the leaves on the trees. But love is
like the wind in their branches; it never is gone. So it seems to me now
when all my heart's leaves are stirred to gladness by the dear gale of
love.

But do not despise me, O sage in the upper chamber, for my selfishness. I
keep far to the windward of you because I was made for love, not for
sacrifice. The altar of your soul life is very fine, very beautiful, but I
am too much alive to be offered up on such a table. Suppose I trusted you,
gave myself with my heart, and in after years you should fall upon the
idea of expurgating all sensations, all heresies, all affections from your
life as the Brahmins do, what then would become of poor Jessica? I should
sit upon your altar like a withered fairy, casting dust over my unhallowed
head and calling down elfish curses upon you. Ah me! when I come upon a
splendid man-statue that suddenly glows into living heart and flesh, I may
wonder and love, but I should never trust myself in the arms of that
phenomenon, lest, being clasped there, he should as suddenly turn back to
his native stone and freeze the life in me!

Have you noticed that I tell you nothing of the village doings here, the
little church sociables and a thousand commonplace details that go to make
up the sum of existence amid such s