I tell you there is nothing more hateful for me to look back upon
than that childish business of ours, that time when we went upstairs
that we might kiss each other unseen. I tell you, it revolts my
soul, from love and from you! I should be perfectly willing to take
all the blame--I do; only I have led you to like that (or to act as
if you did) and I must stop it. Can you not understand how hateful
it is to me to think of making you anything that I should be
disgusted with?

I expect you to read over this letter until you realize that it is,
every word of it, completely true and noble, and until you can write
me so. You and I are to feel ourselves two school-children and live
just so. It is not usual for school-children to marry, but that we
dare upon the strength of our purpose, and in defiance of all
counsel, and of every precedent. We are to feel that we owe our duty
to our ideal; and that simply _because_ of the strength and passion
of our love for each other, we demand perfection, each of the other.
My setting this stern challenge before you is nothing but my
determination to give you my right love, to demand that you be a
perfect woman.

I promise you therefore no quarter; I shall make no sacrifice of my
ideal for your sake. As I wrote you, I mean to be absolutely one
with you, and I expect you to be the same. You shall have (if you
wish it) all of my soul--I shall live my life with you and think all
my thoughts aloud--study to give you _everything_ that I have. And
God only, who knows my heart, knows what utter love for you lies in
those words, what utter trust of you--how I think of you as being
purity and holiness itself. To offer to take any other being into my
soul, to lay bare all the secret places of it to its gaze, all the