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By Root 16662 0

you in this respect. I could have shown you that it was not and could never have been in the power of any other than yourself to move me as I am now moved — to oppress me with this ineffable emotion — to surround and bathe me in this electric light, illumining and enkindling my whole nature — filling my soul with glory, with wonder, and with awe. During our walk in the cemetery I said to you, while the bitter, bitter tears sprang into my eyes —”Helen, I love now — now — for the first and only time.” I said this, I repeat, in no hope that you could believe me, but because I could not help feeling how unequal were the heart-riches we might offer each to each: — I, for the first time, giving my all at once, and forever, even while the words of your poem were yet ringing in my ears: —

Oh then, beloved, I think on thee

And on that life so strangely fair

Ere yet one cloud of Memory

Had gathered in Hope’s golden air.

I think on thee and thy lone grave

On the green hill-side far away —

I see the wilding flowers that wave

Around thee as the night-winds sway;

And still, though only clouds remain

On Life’s horizon, cold and drear,

The dream of Youth returns again

With the sweet promise of the year.

Ah Helen, these lines are indeed beautiful, beautiful — but their very beauty was cruelty to me. Why — why did you show them to me? There seemed, too, so very especial a purpose in what you did.

I have already told you that some few casual words spoken of you — [not very kindly] — by Miss Lynch, were the first in which I had ever heard your name mentioned. She described you, in some [m]easure, personally. She alluded to what she called your “eccentricities” and hinted at your sorrows. Her description of the former strangely arrested — her [half sneers at] the latter enchained and riveted, my attention. She had referred to thoughts, sentiments, traits, moods which I knew to be my own, but which, until that moment, I had believed to be my own solely — unshared by any human being. A profound sympathy took immediate possession of my soul. I cannot better explain to you what I felt than by saying that your unknown heart seemed to pass into my bosom — there to dwell forever — while mine, I thought, was translated into your own. From that hour I loved you. Yes, I now feel that it was then — on that evening of sweet dreams — that the very first dawn of human love burst upon the icy Night of my spirit. Since that period I have never seen nor heard your name without a shiver half of delight, half of anxiety. The impression left, however, upon my mind, by Miss Lynch ([wh]ether through my own fault or her design I know not) was that you were a wife now and a most happy one; — and it is only within the last few months that I have been undeceived in this respect. For this reason I shunned your presence and even the city in which you lived. — You may remember that once, when I passed through Providence with Mrs Osgood, I positively refused to accompany her to your house, and even provoked her into a quarrel by the obstinacy and seeming unreasonableness of my refusal. I fared neither go nor say why I could not. I fared not speak of you — much less see you. For years your name never passed my lips, while my soul drank in, with a delirious thirst, all that was uttered in my presence respecting you. The merest whisper that concerned you awoke in me a shuddering sixth sense, vaguely compounded of fear, ecstatic happiness, and a wild, inexplicable sentiment that resembled nothing so nearly as the consciousness of guilt. — Judge, then, with what wondering, unbelieving joy I received in your well-known MS., the Valentine which first gave me to see that you knew me to exist. The idea of what men call Fate lost then for the first time, in my eyes, its character of futility. I felt that nothing hereafter was to be doubted, and lost myself, for many weeks, in one continuous, delicious dream, where all was a vivid yet indistinct bliss. — Immediately after reading the Valentine, I wished to contrive some mode of acknowledging — without wounding you by