What were _you_ like, Beloved, as a very small child? Should I have loved you from the beginning had we toddled to the rencounter; and would my love have passed safely through the "gallous young hound" period; and could I love you more now in any case, had I _all_ your days treasured up in my heart, instead of less than a year of them? How strangely much have seven miles kept our fates apart! It seems uncharacteristic for this small world,--where meetings come about so far above the dreams of average--to have played us such a prank. This must do for this once, Beloved; for behold me busy to-day: with _what_, I shall not tell you. I would like to put you to a test, as ladies did their knights of old, and hardly ever do now--fearing, I suppose, lest the species should altogether fail them at the pinch. I would like to see if you could come here and sit with me from beginning to end, _with your eyes shut_: never once opening them. I am not saying whether I think curiosity, or affection, would make the attempt too difficult. But if you were sure you could, you might come here to-morrow--a day otherwise interdicted. Only know, having come, that if you open those dear cupboards of vision and set eyes on things not yet intended to be looked at, there will be confusion of tongues in this Tower we are building whose top is to reach heaven. Will you come? I don't _say_ "come"; I only want to know--will you? To-day my love flies low over the earth like a swallow before rain, and touching the tops of the flowers has culled you these. Kiss them until they open: they are full of my thoughts, as the world, to me, is full of you. LETTER XIV. Own Dearest: Come I did not think that you would, or mean that you should seriously; for is it not a poor way of love to make the object of it cut an absurd or partly absurd figure? I wrote only as a woman having a secret on the tip of her tongue and the tips of her fingers, and full of a longing to say it and send it. Here it is at last: love me for it, I have worked so hard to get it done! And you do not know why and what for? Beloved, it--_this_--is the anniversary of the day we first met; and you have forgotten it already or never remembered it:--and yet have been clamoring for "the letters"! On the first anniversary of our marriage, _if you remember it_, you shall have those same letters: and not otherwise. So there they lie safe till doomsday!