weaknesses as well as all the strength, and all that is vain as well
as all that is sacred! You cannot know how I feel about my heart,
but this you may know, that no one else has had a glimpse of it, you
are the first and the last; and so sure am I of you that I dare to
say it, _all_ my life will I live in your presence, and trust to
your sympathy and truth--and feel that I am false to love if I do
not. If there were anything in my heart so foul that I feared to
speak of it, I should give you that first, as the sacrifice of love;
or any vanity or foible--such things are really hardest to have
others know, so great is our conceit.

If I could talk to you to-night, I should do just as I did up on the
hill in the moonlight--frighten you, and make you wonder if there
was _any_ woman who wished to bear such a burden; and perhaps the
saddest thing of all to me is that I do not bear it--instead I bear
the gnawing of a conscience bitter and ashamed of itself. And could
you bear _that_ burden? For Corydon, as I look at myself to-night, I
am before God, a coward and a dastard! I have not done my work! I
have not borne the pain He calls me to bear, I have not wrested out
the strength He put in my secret heart! And here I am chattering,
_talking_ about work to you! And these things are like a nightmare
to me; they turn all my life's happiness to gall. And you are taking
upon yourself this same burden--coming to help me to get rid of it.
Or if you do not wish to, for God's sake, and mine, and yours, don't
come near me--you have come too near as it is! Can you not see that
when I am face to face with these fearful things--and you come and
ask me to give my life to you, to worship you with the best
faculties I possess--that I have no right to say yes?

You once told me you were happy because I called you "mein guter