it costs me now to confess! I had only one hope in life,--it was
that you might still, long after you had ceased to see me, fancy me
not utterly beneath the herd with whom you live. This burning yet
selfish vanity I tear from me, and now I go where no hope can pursue
me. No hope for myself, save one which can scarcely deserve the
name, for it is rather a rude and visionary wish than an
expectation,--it is that under another name and under different
auspices you may hear of me at some distant time; and when I apprise
you that under that name you may recognize one who loves you better
than all created things, you may feel then, at least, no cause for
shame at your lover. What will you be then? A happy wife, a
mother, the centre of a thousand joys, beloved, admired, blest when
the eye sees you and the ear hears! And this is what I ought to
hope, this is the consolation that ought to cheer me; perhaps a
little time hence it will. Not that I shall love you less, but that
I shall love you less burningly, and therefore less selfishly. I
have now written to you all that it becomes you to receive from me.
My horse waits below to bear me from this city, and forever from
your vicinity. For ever!---ay, you are the only blessing forever
forbidden me. Wealth I may gain, a fair name, even glory I may
perhaps aspire to,--to heaven itself I may find a path; but of you
my very dreams cannot give me the shadow of a hope. I do not say,
if you could pierce my soul while I write, that you would pity me.
You may think it strange, but I would not have your pity for worlds;
I think I would even rather have your hate,--pity seems so much like
contempt. But if you knew what an effort has enabled me to tame
down my language, to curb my thoughts, to prevent me from embodying
that which now makes my brain whirl, and my hand feel as if the
living fire consumed it; if you knew what has enabled me to triumph
over the madness at my heart, and spare you what, if writ or spoken,