Chapter LXXIV: Letter LXXIV

Dearest and Dearest: So long as you are still this to my heart I trust to have strength to write it; though it is but a ghost of old happiness that comes to me in the act. I have no hope now left in me: but I love you not less, only more, if that be possible: or is it the same love with just a weaker body to contain it all? I find that to have definitely laid off all hope gives me a certain relief: for now that I am so hopeless it becomes less hard not to misjudge you--not to say and think impatiently about you things which would explain why I had to die like this.

Dearest, nothing but love shall explain anything of you to me. When I think of your dear face, it is only love that can give it its meaning. If love would teach me the meaning of this silence, I would accept all the rest, and not ask for any joy in life besides. For if I had the meaning, however dark, it would be by love speaking to me again at last; and I should have your hand holding mine in the darkness forever.

Your face, Beloved, I can remember so well that it would be enough if I had your hand:--the meaning, just the meaning, why I have to sit blind.