The handwriting was beautiful, only
not very clear, and when I had puzzled over it for a minute she
snatched it back again.
"I'll read it to you," said she.
Well, I thought it was a most beautiful letter. The gentleman said she
had always been the ideal of his life. He owed everything--and by
everything he meant chiefly his worship of beauty--to her. He asked her
to accept his undying devotion, and to believe that, however far
distance and time should part them, he was hers and hers only. He said
he looked back with ineffable contempt upon the days when he had hoped
to build a nest and see her beside him there. Now he had reached the
true empyrean, and he could only ask to know that she, too, was winging
her bright way into regions where he, in another life, might follow and
sing beside her in liquid, throbbing notes to pierce the stars. He
ended by saying that he was not very fit--the opera season had been a
monumental experience this year--and he was taking refuge with an
English brotherhood to lead, for a time, a cloistered life instinct
with beauty and its worship, but that there as everywhere he was hers
eternally. How glad I was of the verbal memory I have been so often
praised for! I knew almost every word of that lovely letter by heart
after the one reading. I shall never forget it.
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