Well, you wonder, what was the end? Never forget;--he had called me "friend"! Mighty of limb, and hard, and blown; Quickly he laughed and set me down. "Heh!" said, he, "but the squeak was narrow, Not to be caught by Johnnie Kigarrow!" Now, I hear, after years gone by, Nobody knows how he came to die. He strode out one night of storm: "Get you to bed, and keep you warm!" Out into darkness so went he: Nobody knows where his bones may be. Only I think--if his tongue let go Truth that once,--how perhaps _I_ know. Twloch river, and Twloch barrow, Do you cover my Johnnie Kigarrow? LETTER XLIV. Dearest: I have been doing something so wise and foolish: mentally wise, I mean, and physically foolish. Do you guess?--Disobeying your parting injunction, and sitting up to see eclipses. It was such a luxury to do as I was _not_ told just for once; to feel there was an independent me still capable of asserting itself. My belief is that, waking, you hold me subjugated: but, once your godhead has put on its spiritual nightcap, and begun nodding, your mesmeric influence relaxes. Up starts resolution and independence, and I breathe desolately for a time, feeling myself once more a free woman. 'Twas a tremulous experience, Beloved; but I loved it all the more for that. How we love playing at grief and death--the two things that must come--before it is their due time! I took a look at my world for three most mortal hours last night, trying to see you _out_ of it. And oh, how close it kept bringing me! I almost heard you breathe, and was forever wondering--Can we ever be nearer, or love each other more than we do? For _that_ we should each want a sixth sense, and a second soul: and it would still be only the same spread out over larger territory. I prefer to keep it nesting close in its present limitations, where it feels like a "growing pain"; children have it in their legs, we in our hearts. I am growing sleepy as I write, and feel I am sending you a dull letter,--my penalty for doing as you forbade.