"This is the hundredth Letter that I've written since we parted. My heart is tired, dear, I shall write no more. You shall have silence for your silence, yet When I am silent, trust me none the less, Believe I love you. If you say that I Have hidden secrets, have not told you all, The diary flung away to keep my life Beyond your eye's inspection, still I say Where is your right to know what lips I've kissed, What hopes or dreams I cherished in the past Before I knew you. If you still accuse My spirit of deceit, hypocrisy In lifting up my flower of love to you Fresh, as it seemed, with morning dew, not tears, I have my own defense for that, you'll see. Or lastly, if your love is turned to gall Because, as you discovered, body of love Was given to Gregory Wenner, after you Had come to me in love and chosen me As servant of you in the war, I write To clear myself to you respecting that, And re-insist 'twas body of love alone, Not love I gave, and what I gave was given Because you won me, left me, did not claim As wholly yours what you had won. But now, As I have hope of life beyond the grave, As I love God, though serving Him but ill, I say to you, I have been wholly yours In spirit and in body since the day I gave to you the locket, sat with you And heard the waltz of Chopin, six days after I went with Gregory Wenner. I explain Why I did this, shall mention it no more; You must be satisfied or go your way In bitterness and hatred." "But first, my love, As spirits equal and with equal rights, Or privilege of equal wrongs, have I Demanded former purity of you? I have repelled revealments of your past; Have never questioned of your marriage, asked, Which might be juster, rights withdrawn from her; May rightly think, since you and she have life In one abode together, that you live As marriage warrants. And above it all Have I not written you to go your way, Find pleasures where you could, have only begged That you keep out of love, continue to give Your love to me? And why? Be cynical, And think I gave you freedom as a gallant That I might with a quiet conscience take Such freedom for myself. It is not true: I've learned the human body, know the male, And know his life is motile, does not rest, And wait, as woman's does, cannot do so. So understanding have put down distaste, That you should fare in freedom, in my heart Have wished that love or ideals might sustain Your spirit; but if not, my heart is filled With happiness, if you love me. Take these thoughts And with them solve your sorrow for my past, Your loathing of it, if you feel that way However bad it be, whatever sins Imagination in you stirred depicts As being in my past."