I have read your last letter, but I only half understand you, and I must wholly disobey. For I have learned the meaning of all things created, the sky and the earth, the stars that are the habitations of loving angels, and the worm who seeks his mate. I love you! It is that for which I have lived my twenty years. At last, without warning, my life has flowered, and the fragrance of the blossom intoxicates me, its color blinds. At first I only knew the earth was changed, and that I could never be the same; but I did not translate the knowledge. All the poets had not told me enough; Shakespeare had not prepared me. But last night--do I ever sleep now?--when I lay thinking, thinking, and always of you, my soul spoke and said to me, "So great a thing must be eternal. This longing is like a Beethoven Sonata; it will live and live, growing in glory and color, through the ages, even if it live in your soul alone." And I woke to the sense of it all, and spoke aloud: "It is love!" It is like having a treasure given me to be all my own; for now I have a word for happy use, and I can say over and over, "I love you," and so tell you all. I can whisper "Beloved" in the brief pauses when the others are with us and I have only the chance of a word in your ear. But let me see you next alone. Let me look into your eyes, and demand whether your soul also has had revelation of the truth. [Sidenote: _Zoe Montrose to Francis Hume_] I ask myself whether this had to come to you so soon, and whether I could have prevented it. I am afraid not. You were bound to fancy the first woman you met, and that woman chanced to be Zoe Montrose. I know exactly how it was. I have yellow hair, and the sun shone on it. There is always a reason, if one could follow it far enough. It might have been Clara. She was with me in the boat, if you remember; only the sun struck her hair at a different angle, and you never discovered how red it is in the hollows, how like leaf mould without. _Bismillah!_ the gods have selected me for your enlightenment, and their will be done. I am glad for you in one particular only. I am a worldly woman, filled from the crown to the toe topful of earthly wisdom; but I am not of those sentimental sirens who, in the strictest good-breeding, turn men into beasts by dallying with their worship, and then leaving them high and dry on the rock of disillusionment. I am honest, and I will sweep away your cobwebs in the beginning. My dear, there is no such thing as love as you conceive it. What you and the other poets have seen is a will-o'-the-wisp, created, heaven knows why, save that we may learn hard lessons and that the world may be peopled. You feel for me an ecstasy of devotion. You think it will be eternal; that you were made for me and I for you, and that our two souls will sail forever on in each other's company, chanting pretty trifles by the way. God bless and save you! this is the very hyperbole of the poets, and of poets under forty at that.