Writing to you now seems weakness: yet it seemed peace to come in here and cry to you. And when I go about I have still strength left, and try to be cheerful. Nobody knows, I think nobody knows. No one in the house is made downcast because of me. How dear they are, and how little I can thank them! Except to you, dearest, I have not shown myself selfish. I love you too much, too much: I cannot write it. LETTER LXI. You are very ill, they tell me. Beloved, it is such kindness in them to have regard for the wish they disapprove and to let me know. Knowledge is the one thing needful whose lack has deprived me of my happiness: the express image of sorrow is not so terrible as the foreboding doubt of it. Not because you are ill, but because I know something definitely about you, I am happier to-day: a little nearer to a semblance of service to you in my helplessness. How much I wish you well, even though that might again carry you out of my knowledge! And, though death might bring you nearer than life now makes possible, I pray to you, dearest, not to die. It is not right that you should die yet, with a mistake in your heart which a little more life might clear away. Praying for your dear eyes to remain open, I realize suddenly how much hope still remains in me, where I thought none was left. Even your illness I take as a good omen; and the thought of you weak as a child and somewhat like one in your present state with no brain for deep thinking, comes to my heart to be cherished endlessly: there you lie, Beloved, brought home to my imagination as never since the day we parted. And the thought comes to the rescue of my helpless longing--that it is as little children that men get brought into the kingdom of Heaven. Let that be the medicine and outcome of your sickness, my own Beloved! I hold my breath with hope that I shall have word of you when your hand has strength again to write. For I know that in sleepless nights and in pain you will be unable not to think of me. If you made resolutions against that when you were well, they will go now that you are laid weak; and so some power will come back to me, and my heart will never be asleep for thinking that yours lies awake wanting it:--nor ever be at rest for devising ways by which to be at the service of your conscious longing. Ah, my own one Beloved, whom I have loved so openly and so secretly, if you were as I think some other men are, I could believe that I had given you so much of my love that you had tired of me because I had made no favor of it but had let you see that I was your faithful subject and servant till death: so that after twenty years you, chancing upon an empty day in your life, might come back and find me still yours;--as to-morrow, if you came, you would.