Not till you die, dearest, shall I die truly! I love you now too much for your heart not to carry me to its grave, though I should die now, and you live to be a hundred. I pray you may! I cannot choose a day for you to die. I am too grateful to life which has given me to you to say--if I were dying--"Come with me, dearest!" Though, how the words tempt me as I write them!--Come with me, dearest: yes, come! Ah, but you kiss me more, I think, when we say good-by than when meeting; so you will kiss me most of all when I have to die:--a thing in death to look forward to! And, till then,--life, life, till I am out of my depth in happiness and drown in your arms! Beloved, that I can write so to you,--think what it means; what you have made me come through in the way of love, that this, which I could not have dreamed before, comes from me with the thought of you! You told me to be still--to let you "worship": I was to write back acceptance of all your dear words. Are you never to be at my feet, you ask. Indeed, dearest, I do not know how, for I cannot move from where I am! Do you feel where my thoughts kiss you? You would be vexed with me if I wrote it down, so I do not. And after all, some day, under a bright star of Providence, I may have gifts for you after my own mind which will allow me to grow proud. Only now all the giving comes from you. It is I who am enriched by your love, beyond knowledge of my former self. Are _you_ changed, dearest, by anything I have done? My heart goes to you like a tree in the wind, and all these thoughts are loose leaves that fly after you when I have to remain behind. Dear lover, what short visits yours seem! and the Mother-Aunt tells me they are most unconscionably long.--You will not pay any attention to _that_, please: forever let the heavens fall rather than that a hint to such foul effect should grow operative through me! This brings you me so far as it can:--such little words off so great a body of--"liking" shall I call it? My paper stops me: it is my last sheet: I should have to go down to the library to get more--else I think I could not cease writing. More love than I can name.--Ever, dearest, your own. LETTER XVII. Dearest: Do I not write you long letters? It reveals my weakness. I have thought (it had been coming on me, and now and then had broken out of me before I met you) that, left to myself, I should have become a writer of books--I scarcely can guess what sort--and gone contentedly into middle-age with that instead of _this_ as my _raison d'etre_. How gladly I lay down that part of myself, and say--"But for you, I had been this quite other person, whom I have no wish to be now"! Beloved, your heart is the shelf where I put all my uncut volumes, wondering a little what sort of a writer I should have made; and chiefly wondering, would _you_ have liked me in that character?