Chapter LXXVII: Letter LXXVII

My own one beloved, my dearest dear! Want me, please want me! I will keep alive for you. Say you wish me to live,--not come to you: don't say that if you can't--but just wish me to live, and I will. Yes, I will do anything, even live, if you tell me to do it. I will be stronger than all the world or fate, if you have any wish about me at all. Wish well, dearest, and surely the knowledge will come to me. Wish big things of me, or little things: wish me to sleep, and I will sleep better because of it. Wish anything of me: only not that I should love you better. I can't, dearest, I can't. Any more of that, and love would go out of my body and leave it clay. If you would even wish _that_, I would be happy at finding a way to do your will below ground more perfectly than any I found on it. Wish, wish: only wish something for me to do. Oh, I could rest if I had but your little finger to love. The tyranny of love is when it makes no bidding at all. That you have no want or wish left in you as regards me is my continual despair. My own, my beloved, my tormentor and comforter, my ever dearest dear, whom I love so much!