"How different everything is now from everything before. Music means what it never did: Life has leaped into blossom for me. Everywhere there is colour and radiance that I had never seen--the air is full of perfume. Dear, the sunshine that fell upon your head has spread over the world! "I understand, as I never understood, that the world--so dazzling to me now--was made for love and is meaningless without it. The years until yesterday are gray--no, not gray, because that was the colour You were wearing--not gray, because that is a beautiful colour. The empty years until yesterday had no colour at all. Yes, the world has meaning only through loving, and without meaning there is no real life. We live only by loving, and now that this gift of life has come to me I love _all_ the world. I feel that I must be so kind, kind, _kind_ to _everybody_! Such an odd thing struck me as my greatest wish. When I was little, I remember grandmother telling me how, when she was a child in pioneer days, the women made the men's clothes--homespun--and how a handsome young Circuit Rider, who was a bachelor, seemed to her the most beautifully dressed man she had ever seen. The women of the different churches made his clothes, as they did their husbands' and brothers.' you see--only better! It came into my head that that would be the divinest happiness that I could know--to sew for you! If you and I lived in those old, old times--you _look_ as if you belonged to them, you know, dear--and You were the young minister riding into the settlement on a big bay horse--and all the girls at the window, of course!--and I sewing away at the homespun for you!--I think all the angels of heaven would be choiring in my heart--and what thick, warm clothes I'd make you for winter! Perhaps in heaven they'll let some of the women sew for the men they love--I wonder! "I hear Cora's voice from downstairs as I write. She's often so angry with Ray, poor girl. It does not seem to me that she and Ray really belong to each other, though they _say_ so often that they do." Richard having read thus far with a growing, vague uneasiness, looked up, frowning. He hoped Laura had no Marie Bashkirtseff idea of publishing this manuscript. It was too intimate, he thought, even if the names in it were to be disguised. . . . "Though they _say_ so often that they do. I think Ray is in love with _her_, but it can't be like _this_. What he feels must be something wholly different--there is violence and wildness in it. And they are bitter with each other so often-- always `getting even' for something. He does care--he is frantically `_in_ love' with her, undoubtedly, but so insanely jealous. I suppose all jealousy is insane. But love is the only sanity. How can what is insane be part of it? I could not be jealous of You. I owe life to you--I have never lived till now." The next writing was two days later: