He was always quite honest and straightforward with me; he treated
me as one man treats another; and yet at times I felt he _must_ see that
with me it was different. If he did see, he made no sign. Perhaps he never
noticed--I am sure he never meant to be cruel. He had never made love to
me; it was no fault of his if I wanted more than he could give me. The
_Sonnets to Silvia_, you say? But what are they? A cosmic philosophy, not
a love-poem; addressed to Woman, not to a woman!
But then, the letters? Ah, the letters! Well, I'll make a clean breast of
it. You have noticed the breaks in the letters here and there, just as
they seem to be on the point of growing a little--warmer? The critics, you
may remember, praised the editor for his commendable delicacy and good
taste (so rare in these days!) in omitting from the correspondence all
personal allusions, all those _details intimes_ which should be kept
sacred from the public gaze. They referred, of course, to the asterisks in
the letters to Mrs. A. Those letters I myself prepared for publication;
that is to say, I copied them out for the editor, and every now and then I
put in a line of asterisks to make it appear that something had been left
out. You understand? The asterisks were a sham--_there was nothing to
leave out_.
No one but a woman could understand what I went through during those
years--the moments of revolt, when I felt I must break away from it all,
fling the truth in his face and never see him again; the inevitable
reaction, when not to see him seemed the one unendurable thing, and I
trembled lest a look or word of mine should disturb the poise of our
friendship; the silly days when I hugged the delusion that he _must_ love
me, since everybody thought he did; the long periods of numbness, when I
didn't seem to care whether he loved me or not.
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