So often, dearest, I sit thinking my hands into yours again as when we were saying good-by the last time. Then it was, under our laughter and light words, that I saw suddenly how the thing too great to name had become true, that from friends we were changed into lovers. It seemed the most natural thing to be, and yet was wonderful--for it was I who loved you first: a thing I could never be ashamed of, and am now proud to own--for has it not proved me wise? My love for you is the best wisdom that I have. Good-night, dearest! Sleep as well as I love you, and nobody in the world will sleep so soundly. P. A few times in my life, Beloved, I have had the Blue-moon-hunger for something which seemed too impossible and good ever to come true: prosaic people call it being "in the blues"; I comfort myself with a prettier word for it. To-day, not the Blue-moon itself, but the Man of it came down and ate plum-porridge with me! Also, I do believe that it burnt his mouth, and am quite reasonably happy thinking so, since it makes me know that you love me as much as ever. If I have had doubts, dearest, they have been of myself, lest I might be unworthy of your friendship or love. Suspicions of you I never had. Who wrote that suspicions among thoughts are like bats among birds, flying only by twilight? But even my doubts have been thoughts, Beloved,--sure of you if not always of myself. And if I have looked for you only with doubtful vision, yet I have always seen you in as strong a light as my eyes could bear:-- blue-moonlight. Beloved, is not twilight: and blue-moonlight has been the light I saw you by: it is you alone who can make sunlight of it. This I read yesterday has lain on my mind since as true and altogether beautiful, with the beauty of major, not of minor poetry, though it was a minor poet who wrote it. It is of a wood where Apollo has gone in quest of his Beloved, and she is not yet to be found: "Here each branch Sway'd with a glitter all its crowded leaves, And brushed the soft divine hair touching them In ruffled clusters.... Suddenly the moon Smoothed herself out of vapor-drift and made The deep night full of pleasure in the eye Of her sweet motion. Not alone she came Leading the starlight with her like a song: And not a bud of all that undergrowth But crisped and tingled out an ardent edge As the light steeped it: over whose massed leaves The portals of illimitable sleep Faded in heaven." That is love in its moonrise, not its sunrise stage: yet you see. Beloved, how it takes possession of its dark world, quite as fully as the brighter sunlight could do. And if I speak of doubts, I mean no twilight and no suspicions: nor by darkness do I mean any unhappiness.