It is an hour since I began to read your letter of Horrible Truth. Now it seems to me it might have been in the last year, in the last century. Actually I feel like a stranger to myself; and my movements are very slow. First, I will tell you that I believe in God, oh, so implicitly--this thought gives me infinite hope. I long to let you know as much of my heart as I can, if I am to be your life-companion, as I firmly believe I am to be. I have such a strange calmness now, and I imagine that I must feel very much the way Rip Van Winkle did when he awoke. I want to try to show you my heart--it is right that I should try, is it not? Know that I have placed much faith and trust in you, in anything that you did. If you opened one door to me and told me it led to the great and permanent truth, I believed you absolutely. If you hauled me back and put me through an opposite one, telling me that there my road lay, I believed you with equal faith. Now, now, at the end of an hour, I am, through you, convinced of one door, the only and true entrance; and I am as sure as I am that the sun is shining at this moment, that nothing in God’s world can ever again make me lose sight of it. I have found that _you_ can lose sight of it, Thyrsis,--something shows me that I have in the last month been more right than you. Yes, I have, Thyrsis, though you may not know it. And the reason I couldn’t stay right was because I am not strong enough to grasp my good impulses, and keep hold of them: because I have not enough faith in the soul within me. I will try to tell you what I have felt since reading your letter. All is so disgustingly calm in me now. But listen, I believe I have had a little glimpse this afternoon of what it is to _feel_; and because of that knowledge I now am not afraid to tell you that I claim something of God and life--that I can get it if you can. This has been very strong in me at moments, but, as I tell you, I have not yet learned to hold my glimpses of truth--they seem to come to me, and as quickly disappear. I began to read your letter, and I cannot describe to you the convulsion that came over me. It seemed that I had the feeling of an empty skull on a desert; such a feeling--you can never have it! All the horror and despair! I tried to form my thoughts and tell myself it was not true. I tried to pray, and I did pray--out loud--and asked God to give me strength to read the letter. I tried to use all the penetration I was capable of, to find out one thing, whether you were purely and unreservedly sincere in it. I wondered whether you really wished to live your life alone, but could not find the courage to tell me so. I firmly believe that no failure in the future, no disgust or helplessness, could ever bring me the complete anguish of those moments. Can you realize what such a thing meant to me, Thyrsis?