YOU have sent me the answer which I expected. Now tell me how to write a love-letter that shall speak no word of love—a letter as full of the passion, the boundless adoration, and the faith of love, as the ChaurapanchÂsika, those fifty distichs of Chauras that proclaimed his forbidden worship of the lovely daughter of King Sundava. The Brahman’s lament won the king’s heart and saved the poet’s life; and I would learn of you how to win a heart, and perhaps save more than one life from shipwreck. After all, our civilisation may, in its comparative refinement, be more cruel than the unfettered caprice of an Eastern king nineteen centuries ago. Tell me, tell me, you who know, how can pen and ink be made to speak with the force and persuasion of spoken words, when half the world divides the writer from the reader of poor halting sentences that must, of necessity, leave unsaid all that the heart yearns to utter?

When eye can look into eye, when the stretched-out hand meets a responsive touch,—timid and uncertain, or confident with the knowledge of passionate love passionately returned,—the words that are spoken may be feeble, but the influence of a loved presence will carry conviction, and one voice awaken in one heart the music of the spheres. Then the dullest day is bright, the lovers’ feet tread on air, day is a joy and night a gladness, or at least a dream of delight. Then life is divided between anticipation and reality. No wonder the hours fly on wings; no wonder the thoughts suggested by brief absences are forgotten in the wonder and delight of briefer meetings, till the dread moment of separation comes, and aching hearts too late realise the appalling suddenness of the actual parting and the ceaseless regret for opportunities lost. You understand that my thoughts are not of the devout lover who is going through a short apprenticeship before signing a bond of perpetual servitude or partnership, as the case may be. That is a phase which, if it occasionally deserves sympathy, seldom receives it; indeed, it hardly awakens interest, except in those who wish to see the preliminaries concluded, that their interest in the principals may either cease, and give themselves more freedom, or begin, and bring them some profit. I appeal to you to tell me how to keep alive the divine flame when oceans and continents divide two loving hearts; how to tell of longing and bitter regret, of faith and love and worship, when such words may not be written; how to make personal influence felt across five seas and through many weary months; how to kill doubt and keep strong and faithful a priceless love, against which the stars in their courses may seem ready to fight; how, above all, to help one who needs help, and warm sympathy, and wise advice, so that, if it be possible, she may escape some of life’s misery and win some of life’s joy.

Journeying through this weary old world, who has not met the poor struggling mortal, man or woman, old or young, for whom the weal or woe of life hangs in the balance, to turn one way or the other, when the slightest weight is cast into either scale? Who has not been asked for sympathy or advice, or simply to lend an ear to the voice of a hopeless complaint? Some feel the iron in their souls far more keenly than others. While the strong fight, the weak succumb, and the shallow do not greatly mind, after they have gone through a short torture of what seems to them profound emotion. But in their case sympathy is rather wasted, for, however violent their grief, their tears are soon dried, and it must have been written for them that “joy cometh with the morning.”

You know what it is when the heart seems to struggle for more freedom, because it is choking with a love it may not, or will not, express; when, in the absence of one face, all other companionship is irksome, all conversation stale and unprofitable; when daylight wearies and night is cruelly welcome, because the struggle to play a part, and pretend an interest one does not feel, is over, and one stretches out one’s arms to the darkness, and whispers, “Come to me,” to ears that cannot hear. What strange unnatural creatures we are, for we stifle the voices of our souls, and seem to delight in torturing ourselves for the sake of some idea born of a tradition, the value of which we dare not even submit to the test of argument. If in response to your heart’s cry there came the one whose presence you desire, you would instantly torture yourself rather than confess your message. Whatever it cost you, you would not only pretend that the sudden appearance of the greatly beloved was the last thing you wished for, but you might even send him away with the impression that he had deeply offended you. And yet—Ah well! this artificial fortress we take such pains to build, and to keep in repair, is not proof against every assault. There are crises of life—an imminent danger, the presence or appearance of death, a sudden and irresistible wave of passionate feeling, or a separation that has no promise of reunion—before these the carefully constructed rampart of convention and outward seeming goes down like a house of cards.

There was a day which, to me, will ever be my day of days—halcyon hours of joy and gladness, coloured by a setting of wondrous beauty, and burdened by the fateful shadow of an inevitable parting that would, in all human probability, be the point where two lives, which had grown strangely and sweetly close, must divide, without any hope of re-uniting. You remember how in that early dawn we drove through the dewy grass, covered with the fairies’ dainty white gossamer kerchiefs, lace cobwebs spread out to dry in the morning sun; and, as we left the town and made for the distant mountains, the dark red road wound up and down hills, through orchards and grass-land and forest, till we gained a little village, where the road forked, and a clear, rain-swollen stream slipped swiftly past the picturesque brown cottages. Whilst the horses were being changed, we strolled a little way down the road, and watched a group of laughing urchins, playing in that lilied stream like water-babies. How they screamed with delight as their small glistening bodies emerged from the shining water to struggle up a crazy ladder that led from the back of a hut down into the winding stream; and how the sun shone! lighting the snow-white plumage of a brood of solemn-looking ducks, sailing majestically round the sedge-girt edges of a tiny pool beneath the bridge. In that pool was mirrored a patch of clear blue sky, and across it fell the shadows cast by a great forest tree. That was “a day in spring, a day with thee and pleasure!” Then, as we drove on, there were heavenly glimpses of sapphire hills, seen down long vistas through the forest. For the last few miles, the road followed the bank of a deep and rapid river, whose clear waters reflected the graceful overhanging trees, while the banks were buried in a thick maze of ferns and grasses, and great shining patches of buttercups and marigolds.

Were you sorry when the drive was over, and our sweet converse perforce ended? I wonder would you have enjoyed it better had that exquisite spot, in the depths of the forest, been ours alone for that one day? One day is so little in a lifetime, and yet what was ours was good! Do you remember how, in that far-off place, we met on the road one whom you recognised, but whose face and manner gave no clue to the romantic story of his life, a story that would have brought him great renown in the days when valour was accounted of the highest worth? You have not forgotten that, nor yet the return drive, when, as we crested the last hill, and began the steep and tortuous descent into the plain, the lurid rays of the setting sun threw crimson stains across dark pools of lotus-bearing water, half-hidden by overhanging grasses and the dank leaves of white-blossomed lilies. Beneath us lay a wide stretch of swamp-land, the very picture of abandonment, desolation, and solitude; heaps of up-turned earth, green with rank vegetation, and pools of dead water, whose dark shadows reflected the lambent fires of the western horizon. A broken line of black trees stood clear against the rapidly-darkening sky, but, as we reached the foot of the hill, heaven and earth were wrapped in the shadows of night. And then my day was done. Doubt was buried, and the “big word” bound our hearts in the joy of that priceless sympathy which carries human aspirations beyond the storm and stress of human life to a knowledge of the Divine. We said little; when hearts are at one, few words are needed, for either knows the other’s thoughts. But you were slow to unbend, making a brave fight against fate, and keeping true to your creed, though seven days would bring the end. To me, the light of that one brilliant day had been intensified by the rapidly approaching shadow of the inevitable parting. I wonder—now that the bitterness of separation has come, now that I vaguely ask myself what has happened to Time since I lost you—whether, if we could have that day again, you would again be so merciless in your determination to hold love in leash, and give no sign of either the passion or the pain that was tearing your heart. I think it was a hard fight, for, though you concealed your thoughts, you could not hide the physical effects of the struggle. Did you know how your weariness distressed me, and what I would have given to have the right to try to comfort you?

I have a confused memory of those other days. Brief meetings and partings; insane desires to make any excuse to write to you, or hear from you, though I had but just left your presence; a hopeless and helpless feeling that I had a thousand things to say to you, and yet that I never could say one of them, because the time was so short that every idea was swallowed up in the ever-present dread of your departure, and the ceaseless repetition of your cry, “I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it.” From out that vague background shine two stars, two brilliant memories to light the darkness of the weary months until I see your face again—a blissful memory and a sign. All the rest seems swallowed up in the bitterness of that parting, which comes back like some horrible nightmare.

Only black water under a heavy overcast sky; only the knowledge that the end had come; that what should be said must be said then, with the instant realisation that the pain of the moment, the feeling of impotent rebellion against fate, destroyed all power of reflection, and the impulse to recklessness was only choked back by the cold words of a publicly spoken farewell. Then rapid motion, and in one minute the envious darkness had taken everything but the horrible sense of loss and inconsolable regret. Whatever my suffering, it was worse for you; I at least was alone, alone with a voice which ever murmured in my ears that despairing cry, “I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it.”

When two who have been brought together, so close together that they have said the “big word” without faltering, are suddenly swept asunder by the receding wave of adverse circumstances, there must ever arise in their hearts that evil question, “How is it now? Is it the same? Or have time, and distance, and a thousand other enemies, so filled the space between us that the memory of either is growing dim, and the influence of the other waning, waning till the absence of all binding tie begins to feel like a very bond. Will the vision simply fade gradually out of sight?” For us there is no promise, no tie, no protestations of fealty; only knowledge, and that forced upon us rather than sought. You give or you don’t give, that is all; if you also take away, you are within your right. There may be reasons and reasons, I understand them all; and I have only one desire, that whatever prevails may secure you happiness. What you can give seems to me so unlike what others ever have to give, so infinitely beyond price, that, where I might gain, it is not right that I should speak. Therefore I cannot urge, I dare not even plead, a cause that has less to recommend it than the forlornest hope.