Dearest: How, when, and where is there any use wrangling as to

which of us loves the other the best ("the better," I believe, would be

the more grammatical phrase in incompetent Queen's English), and why in

that of all things should we pretend to be rivals? For this at least

seems certain to me, that, being created male and female, no two lovers

since the world began ever loved each other quite in the same way: it

is not in nature for it to be so. They cannot compare: only to the best

that is in them they do love each after their kind,--as do we for

certain!

Be sure, then, that I am utterly contented with what I get (and you,

Beloved, and you?): nay, I wonder forever at the love you have given me:

and if I will to lay mine at your feet, and feel yours crowning my

life,--why, so it is, you know; you cannot alter it! And if you insist

that your love is at my feet, I have only to turn Irish and reply that

it is because I am heels over head in love with you:--and, mark you,

that is no pretty attitude for a lady that you have driven me into in

order that I may stick to my "crown"!

Go to, dearest! There is one thing in which I can beat you, and that is

in the bandying of words and all verbal conjurings: take this as the

last proof of it and rest quiet. I know you love me a great great deal

more than I have wit or power to love you: and that is just the little

reason why your love mounts till, as I tell you, it crowns me (head or

heels): while mine, insufficient and groveling, lies at your feet, and

will till they become amputated. And I can give you, but won't, sixty

other reasons why things are as I say, and are to be left as I say. And

oh, my world, my world, it is with you I go round sunwards, and you make

my evenings and mornings, and will, till Time shuts his wings over us!

And now it is doleful business I have to write to you....

I have dropped to sleep over all this writing of things, and my cheek down

on the page has made the paper unwilling to take the ink again:--what a

pretty compliment to me: and, if you prefer it, what an easy way of

writing to you! I can send you such any day and be as idle as I like. And

you will decide about all the above exactly as you and I think best (or

should it be "better" again, being only between us two?). When you get

this, blow your beloved self a kiss in the glass for me,--a great big

shattering blow that shall astonish Mercury behind his window-pane.

Good-night, my best--or "better," for that is what I most want you to be.




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