woman that did not love me. I know no reason why any woman should love
me, and if no woman can find any, I most go alone. Lufa has found none
yet, and life and love too seem to have gone out of me waiting. If you
ask me why I do not give it all up, I have no answer. You will say for
Lufa, it is only that the right man is not come! It may be so; but I
believe there is more than that in it. I fear she is all outside. It is
true her poetry is even passionate sometimes; but I suspect all her
inspiration comes of the poetry she reads, not of the nature or human
nature around her; it comes of ambition, not of love. I don't know much
about verse, but to me there is an air of artificiality about all hers.
I can not understand how you could praise her long poem so much--if you
were in love with her. She has grown to me like the ghost I told you of.
I put out my hand to her, and it goes through her. It makes me feel dead
myself to be with her. I wonder sometimes how it would be if suddenly
she said she loved me. Should I love her, or should we have changed
parts? She is very dainty--very lady-like--but womanly! At one time--and
for this I am now punished--the ambition to wake love in her had no
small part in my feeling toward her--ambition to be the first and only
man so to move her: despair has long cured me of that; but not before I
had come to love her in a way I can not now understand. Why I should
love her I can not tell; and were it not that I scorn to marry her
without love, I should despise my very love. You are thinking, 'Well
then, the way is clear for me!' It is; I only want to prepare you for
what I am confident will follow: you will have the heart taken out of
you! That you are poor will be little obstacle if she loves you. She is
the heiress, and can do much as she pleases. If she were in love, she
would be obstinate. It must be in her somewhere, you will say, else how
could she write as she does? But, I say again, look at the multitudes
that go to church, and communicate, with whose being religion has no
more to do than with that of Satan! I've said my say. Good-night!"