“You will ask if I then was wholly satisfied? You will ask if notoriety pleased me? If I cared for no other and humbler good after I had attained that—in short, if I did not yearn for other love than that lavished on me by my own kin. In all calmness and confidence now, I can answer, yes! there were hopes unsatisfied, desires unfulfilled. Admiration was not _all_ I craved—commendation not all I coveted. But years passed on, and with them the time when I could have rejoiced in loving and in being loved. The wild dream that haunted my mind of a perfect happiness on earth, of another kind of affection than I had yet received or given, went by. Coldness, and I am almost constrained to think at times, heartlessness, have usurped the place once occupied by the winged god; the altar which needed but a word to be enkindled and wrapped in flame, is torn away—a calm, immovable spirit occupies its place. I am not lonely or unhappy, only I feel strangely changed. I feel old in spirit; there may be no cloud, but there certainly is no sunshine; passionless now, and without the least craving for human love, my years glide on. I am satisfied in having helped to make the happiness of those for whom I have labored, and yet, true to woman’s belief, I must say, I am well aware that I have missed life’s highest good; I have passed by, in my eager search for a something that has not satisfied, that bright possession which the poorest of earth’s children, equally with the most exalted have extended to them by the hand of our beneficent Father. Do you think I am strangely confiding with one whom for ten years I have not known by thought, or word, or deed? But we were children together; and I remember how that you more than all I left behind me knew the thoughts and desires of my inner life. Doubtless, since we have come to be _women_, we have both much changed, but at this hour I will believe you sympathize with me as in the days of old.