did this! Why, liebchen, I'll take my oath right this minute Georgia
hasn't a freckle! I'm even willing--(oh Lord, _am_ I?--Yes, by the gods I
_am_)--to read every abominable line she writes for that abominable
paper. Am I an ingrate? Didn't Georgia bring me to _you?_--and is
anything too much, even to the reading of her stuff--yes, by Jove, and
_liking_ it?

"Now prepare yourself to receive the sympathy of every one you know when
you tell them you are going to marry me. Some kind of divine
hallucination is upon you, acting for my good, and you do not see how
profoundly you are to be pitied. But other people will see, and will tell
you about it, only you will think _they_ are under a hallucination, which
is one of the phases of _yours_. The truth is I am a grubbing old
scientist. I prowl around in laboratories and don't know much of anything
else, and more than half the time my hands are stained with unaesthetic
colours you won't like at all. And they tell me I have a foolish way of
sitting and thinking about one thing, and that sometimes I don't do
things I say I am going to--meet my appointments and things like that,
although of course that won't apply to you. And here you might have
married some artist chap, or society fellow who would know all about the
proper thing!

"But never mind, poor little girl--I'll make it up to you. You may miss
some of the lesser, but you'll have the greater. You'll have the
love that enfolds one's whole being--the love that is eternal. Yes,
dear--eternal. The mariner has his compass, the astronomer his stars, the
Swiss peasant has his Alps--and we have our love. It must mean all those
eternal things to us. Don't you feel that it will?

"This train is rushing along jostling my hand so I can scarcely write.