I must write a long letter. It is one of the kind that you do not
like.

In the first place, you complain of the contradictions in my
letters. I am sorry. I live so, struggling always with what is not
best in me, and continually falling down. Also, in this matter I am
an utter stranger, groping my way; and there is an element of
passion in it, a dangerous element, which leads me continually
astray.

I can only say that in my ideal of love, which is utter love and
spiritual love, I think of living my life with you in entire
nakedness of soul. Therefore, I shall always be before you exactly
as I should be by myself. And I shall write you now exactly what I
have been thinking, what is hard and unkind in it, as well as the
rest. You will learn to know me as a man far from perfect, often
going astray himself, often feeling wrong things, often leading you
astray and making you wretched. But behind all this there is the
thing often lost sight of, but always present--the iron duty that I
have, and the force in me which drives me to it.

All this morning I have been thinking of my book, losing myself in
it and filling myself with its glory. This afternoon I fell to
thinking about us; and thoughts which have been lurking in my mind
for a long time got the upper hand for the first time. They were
that I did not love you as I ought to, that I could not; that the
love which I felt was a thing from my own heart, and that it had
carried me away because I was anxious to persuade myself I had found
my ideal upon earth; that you _could_ not satisfy the demands upon
life that I made, and that if I married you it would be to make you