e with my own spirit, not to know myself,
and, so, to have lost the common illusions of vanity. All the men I
had ever known could not make your stature among them. So it was not
distrust, but reverence rather. I sate by while the angel stirred the
water, and I called it _Miracle_. Do not blame me now, ... _my_ angel!

Nor say, that I 'do not lean' on you with all the weight of my 'past'
... because I do! You cannot guess what you are to me--you cannot--it
is not possible:--and though I have said _that_ before, I must say it
again ... for it comes again to be said. It is something to me between
dream and miracle, all of it--as if some dream of my earliest
brightest dreaming-time had been lying through these dark years to
steep in the sunshine, returning to me in a double light. _Can_ it be,
I say to myself, that _you_ feel for me _so_? can it be meant for me?
this from _you_?

If it is your 'right' that I should be gloomy at will with you, you
exercise it, I do think--for although I cannot promise to be very
sorrowful when you come, (how could that be?) yet from different
motives it seems to me that I have written to you quite superfluities
about my 'abomination of desolation,'--yes indeed, and blamed myself
afterwards. And now I must say this besides. When grief came upon
grief, I never was tempted to ask 'How have I deserved this of God,'
as sufferers sometimes do: I always felt that there must be cause
enough ... corruption enough, needing purification ... weakness
enough, needing strengthening ... _nothing_ of the chastisement could
come to me without cause and need. But in this different hour, when
joy follows joy, and God makes me happy, as you say, _through_ you ...
I cannot repress the ... 'How have I deserved _this_ of Him?'--I know
I have not--I know I do not.

Could it be that heart and life were devastated to make room for
you?--If so, it was well done,--dearest! They leave the ground fallow
before the wheat.

'Were you wrong in answering?' Surely not ... unless it is wrong to
show all this goodness ... and too much, it may be for _me_. When the
plants droop for drought and the copious showers fall suddenly, silver
upon silver, they die sometimes of the reverse of their adversities.
But no--_that_, even, shall not be a danger! And if I said 'Do not
answer,' I did not mean that I would not have a doubt removed--(having
_no_ doubt!--) but I was simply unwilling to seem to be asking for
golden words ... go