But I am jesting
with a sore heart. It is strange that I can jest at all; and yet I
know that I am richer and happier in owning the smallest corner of
your heart, than if I possessed the whole of any other woman's."
He wrote a great deal more of the same sort, by turns light, fanciful,
woful or desperate. But all this Rose ignored. "I am very glad," she
wrote demurely, "that you are rich and happy on such insufficient
grounds. I could scarcely deny a corner of my heart to any of my
friends, but the rest of them are well enough acquainted with me to
know that the possession is not a source of unmixed joy. This illusion
of yours must be destroyed, and, as you will see, my share of this
correspondence is going to tend gently but inexorably towards that
end. I still cherish hopes of retaining your friendship. It is so much
more difficult for a man to be a woman's friend than it is for him to
be by turns her worshipper and oppressor--and you are made to conquer
difficult things, and be made stronger by them. You have admirable
qualities--self-forgetfulness, lofty purpose, a will that never
falters, a heart that never faints.
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