bitter letters. I treated her as though she alone were
responsible for my life and hers; I said she had diverted my energies,
betrayed me, ruined my life. I hinted she was cold-blooded, mercenary,
shameless. Someday you, with that quick temper of yours and your power
of expression, will understand that impulse to write, to pour out a
passionately unjust interpretation of some nearly intolerable situation,
and it is not the least of all the things I owe to Mary that she
understood my passion and forgave those letters and forgot them. I tried
twice to go and see her. But I do not think I need tell you, little son,
of these self-inflicted humiliations and degradations. An angry man is
none the less a pitiful man because he is injurious. The hope that had
held together all the project of my life was gone, and all my thoughts
and emotions lay scattered in confusion....

You see, my little son, there are two sorts of love; we use one name
for very different things. The love that a father bears his children,
that a mother feels, that comes sometimes, a strange brightness and
tenderness that is half pain, at the revelation of some touching aspect
of one long known to one, at the sight of a wife bent with fatigue and
unsuspicious of one's presence, at the wretchedness and perplexity of
some wrong-doing brother, or at an old servant's unanticipated tears,
that is love--like the love God must bear us. That is the love we must
spread from those of our marrow until it reaches out to all mankind,
that will some day reach out to all mankind. But the love of a young man
for a woman takes this quality only in rare moments of illumination and
complete assurance. My love for Mary was a demand, it was a wanton claim
I scored the more deeply against her for every moment of happiness she
gave me. I see now that as I emerged from the first abjection of my
admiration and began to feel assured of her affection, I meant nothing
by her but to possess her, I did not want her to be happy as I want you
to be happy even at the price of my life; I wanted her. I wanted her as
barbarians want a hunted enemy, alive or dead. It was a flaming jealousy
to have her mine. That granted, then I was prepared for all
devotions....

This is how men love women. Almost as exclusively and fiercely I think
do women love men. And the deepest question before humanity is just how
far this jealous greed may be subdued to a more generous passion. The
fierce jealousy of m