My first impulse on reading your letter was to come immediately to Morningtown and carry you away by storm; but second thoughts have prevailed and I am writing merely to bid you good-bye. For, after all, if I came, what could I do? I would not see you clandestinely and so mingle deceit with our love, and I could not see you in your father's house while he feels as he does. It would be fruitless too; you have come to the meeting of ways and have chosen. I think you have chosen wrong, for the world belongs to the young and not to the old. Life is ours with all the prophecy and hopes of the future. Ah, what mockery lurked in those words we read together in the shadow of your beloved trees, while your heart lay in my hands fluttering like a captive bird: So let us live and love till life be out, And let the greybeards wag and flout. And now dear Love, only one phrase of all that poem shall ring in my ears,--that solemn _nox perpetua_, that long unending night, for every joy you promised. Ah, would you have thrust me away so easily if I had not seemed to you wrapt up in a strange shadow life into which no reality of passion could enter? And was your love, too, only a shadow? God help me then! Yet I would not reproach you, for, after all, the choice must have cost you a weary pain. I have brought only misery to you, and you have brought only misery to me--and this is the fruit of love's battle with religion. Do you remember the story of Iphigenia in Lucretius and that resounding line, "So much of ill religion could persuade"? Do you know Landor's telling of that story, "O father! I am young and very happy"? And so, our story has been made one with the long tragedy of life and of the poets; and the bitterness of all this evil wrought by religion has troubled my brain till I know not what to say. Only this, sweet girl, that no tears of separation and long waiting can wash away the love I bear you. And, yes, I will not believe that you can forget me. Come to me when you will, now or many years hence, and the chamber of my heart shall be garnished and ready to receive you, the latch hanging from the door, and within, on the hearth, the fire burning unquenched and unquenchable. Will you remember this? There is no woman in the whole earth to me, but Jessica. It will be so easy for me to shut myself off from all the world, and wait--wait, I say, and work. No, I think you will not forget. There has grown within me with love a mystic power to which I can give no name. But I know that in the long silences of the night while I sit reflecting after the day's toil is done--that something shall go forth from me to you, and you shall turn restlessly in your sleep and remember my kisses. And now good-bye. Do not interpret anything I have said as a rebuke. You are altogether fair in my eyes, without spot or blemish, and I would not exchange the pain you have given me for the joys of a thousand fleeting loves. And once again, good-bye.