“He is almost completely dependent upon me now. I nurse him as I would a child. It would be utterly inadequate to say that this fills me with happiness as being a return of some of the kindness that he has shown me. No, there is something besides that. The gratitude in my heart is great,--greater than I had thought so small and mean a heart could have. I am glad that I have it. But the joy of it all is the doing for this man, without regard to gratitude. To do for him; to nurse him; to cheer him; to feel that he needs me and wants me,--that is my heaven. And although a dreadful fear haunts me that he is dying,--that in some way that I cannot understand I am killing him,--that if he should die my life would be empty and dark,--still, it would be infinitely sweet to have him die in my arms, still needing me, still wanting me. Now that I have written that,--how could I have written it?--I will write more in all shamelessness. I want him to _say_ that he needs me and wants me,--that he needs me and wants me to the end of his life. “As I have written that much, I will write the rest, else my heart will burst. I love this man. I love him with all my heart, all my soul. I love him for everything that he is, not for anything that he has done. He is the one man whom the great God in His cruel wisdom and merciless providence has sent into my life for me to love. And with my tears wetting these pages, and my soul breathing prayers for his recovery, and his delivery to me, I pledge and consecrate myself to him to the end of my days, whatever may come. With every good impulse within me I will strive to be worthy of so great a heart, so noble a love. I will try to win his love by deserving it.... “An unexpected change for the better has come. Our supply of food had fallen so low that I had about determined to take matters into my own hands, enter the forbidden chamber, and get more provisions, when another idea occurred to me. It was absolutely necessary that we have more food. More important than that was the evident fact that he would die for the need of it if it were not forthcoming. I feared the disturbing effect of my going into the forbidden chamber, and so decided to make a thorough search of the cabin first. Knowing his inexplicable peculiarity on the subject of our food, I suspected that at some time in his mental wandering he may have concealed some in the cabin. So this morning before daylight, while he slept,--his sleeping is incredibly light,--I cautiously made a search of the cabin, and happily found a few nourishing things in the bottom of a box, where he had either concealed them or left them forgotten. These I prepared for him in a most tempting manner. I arranged my own dishes in a way to make him think I had eaten abundantly myself, and told him so when he awoke and refused to eat, urging me to eat what I had prepared for him.