impatience, and Perdita became aware that the system she had adopted could
not continue; she must explain herself to him; she could not summon courage
to speak--she wrote thus:--

"Read this letter with patience, I entreat you. It will contain no
reproaches. Reproach is indeed an idle word: for what should I reproach
you?

"Allow me in some degree to explain my feeling; without that, we shall both
grope in the dark, mistaking one another; erring from the path which may
conduct, one of us at least, to a more eligible mode of life than that led
by either during the last few weeks.

"I loved you--I love you--neither anger nor pride dictates these lines;
but a feeling beyond, deeper, and more unalterable than either. My
affections are wounded; it is impossible to heal them:--cease then the
vain endeavour, if indeed that way your endeavours tend. Forgiveness!
Return! Idle words are these! I forgive the pain I endure; but the trodden
path cannot be retraced.

"Common affection might have been satisfied with common usages. I believed
that you read my heart, and knew its devotion, its unalienable fidelity
towards you. I never loved any but you. You came the embodied image of my
fondest dreams. The praise of men, power and high aspirations attended your
career. Love for you invested the world for me in enchanted light; it was
no longer the earth I trod--the earth, common mother, yielding only trite
and stale repetition of objects and circumstances old and worn out. I lived
in a temple glorified by intensest sense of devotion and rapture; I walked,
a consecrated being, contemplating only your power, your excellence;