Literary Love-Letters | Page 9

confess that two passions are greater than any man, the passion for
God and the passion of a great love. They send a man hungry and
naked into the street, and make his subterfuges with existence
ridiculous. How rarely they come! How inadequate the man who is
mistaken about them! We peer into the corners of life after them, but
they elude us. There are days of splendid consciousness, and we think

we have them--then----
No, it is foolish, bête, dear lady, to be deceived by a sentiment; better
the comfortable activities of the world. They will suit you best; leave
the other for the dream hidden in a glass of champagne.
But let me love you always. Let me fancy you, when I walk down these
gleaming boulevards in the silent evenings, as you sit flashingly lovely
by some soft lamplight, wrapped about in the cotton-wools of society.
That will reconcile me to the roar of these noonday streets. The city
exists for you.

NO. XI. UNSATISFIED.
(Miss Armstrong wills to drift.)
... Come to Sorrento....

NO. XII. THE ILLUSION.
(Eastlake resumes some weeks later. He has put into Bar Harbor on a
yachting trip. He sits writing late at night by the light of the binnacle
lamp.)
Sweet lady, a few hours ago we slipped in here past the dark shore of
your village, in almost dead calm, just parting the heavy waters with
our prow. It was the golden set of the summer afternoon: a thrush or
two were already whistling clear vespers in he woods; all else was
fruitfully calm.
And then, in the stillness of the ebb, we floated together, you and I,
round that little lighthouse into the sheltering gloom of the woods.
Then we drifted beyond it all, in serene solution of this world's fret! To-
morrows you may keep for another.
This night was richly mine. You brought your simple self, undisturbed

by the people who expect of you, without your little airs of experience.
I brought incense, words, devotion, and love. And I treasure now a few
pure tones, some simple motions of your arm with the dripping paddle,
a few pure feelings written on your face. That is all, but it is much. We
got beyond necessity and the impertinent commonplace of Chicago.
We had ourselves, and that was enough.
And to-night, as I lie here under the cool, complete heavens, with only
a twinkling cottage light here and there in the bay to remind me of
unrest, I see life afresh in the old, simple, eternal lines. These are our
days of full consciousness.
Do you remember that clearing in the woods where the long weeds and
grass were spotted with white stones--burial-place it was--their bright
faces turned ever to the sunshine and the stars? They spoke of other
lives than yours and mine. Forgotten little units in our disdainful world,
we pass them scornfully by. Other lives, and perhaps better, do you
think? For them the struggle never came which holds us in a fist of
brass, and thrashes us up and down the pavement of life. Perhaps--can
you not, at one great leap, fancy it?--two sincere souls could escape
from this brass master, and live, unmindful of strife, for a little grave on
a hillside in the end? They must be strong souls to renounce that
cherished hope of triumph, to be content with the simple, antique things,
just living and loving--the eternal and brave things; for, after all, what
you and I burn for so restlessly is a makeshift ambition. We wish to go
far, "to make the best of ourselves." Why not, once for all, rely upon
God to make? Why not live and rejoice?
And the little graves are not bad: to lie long years within sound of this
great-hearted ocean, with the peaceful, upturned stones bearing this full
legend, "This one loved and lived...." Forgive me for making you sad.
Perhaps you merely laugh at the intoxication your clear air has brought
about. Well, dearest lady, the ships are striking their eight bells for
midnight, the gayest cottages are going out, light by light, and
somewhere in the still harbor I can hear a fisherman laboriously
sweeping his boat away to the ocean. Away!--that is the word for us: I,
in this boat southward, and ever away, searching in grim fashion for an

accounting with Fate; you, in your intrepid loveliness, to other lives.
And if I return some weeks hence, when I have satisfied the
importunate business claims, what then? Shall we slip the cables and
drift quietly out "to the land east of the sun and west of the moon"?

NO. XIII. SANITY.
(Eastlake refuses Miss Armstrong's last invitation, continues, and
concludes.)
Last night was given to me for insight. You