But there never
was any "our life;" it was always "our lives" to the end....
If you knew what a relief it is to tell some one at last, you would bear
with me, you would let me hurt you! I shall never be quite so lonely
again, now that some one knows.
Let me begin at the beginning. When I first met Vincent Rendle I was not
twenty-five. That was twenty years ago. From that time until his death,
five years ago, we were fast friends. He gave me fifteen years, perhaps
the best fifteen years, of his life. The world, as you know, thinks that
his greatest poems were written during those years; I am supposed to have
"inspired" them, and in a sense I did. From the first, the intellectual
sympathy between us was almost complete; my mind must have been to him (I
fancy) like some perfectly tuned instrument on which he was never tired of
playing. Some one told me of his once saying of me that I "always
understood;" it is the only praise I ever heard of his giving me. I don't
even know if he thought me pretty, though I hardly think my appearance
could have been disagreeable to him, for he hated to be with ugly people.
At all events he fell into the way of spending more and more of his time
with me. He liked our house; our ways suited him. He was nervous,
irritable; people bored him and yet he disliked solitude. He took
sanctuary with us. When we travelled he went with us; in the winter he
took rooms near us in Rome. In England or on the continent he was always
with us for a good part of the year.
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