Your long waited for letter brought me both joy & pain; but the pain was not of your giving. I gather from it that a long letter[9] which I wrote you Sept. 6th after I had received the precious packet, a letter in which I opened all my heart to you, never reached your hands: nor yet a shorter one[10] which, tortured by anxiety & suspense about its predecessor, I wrote Oct. 15, it, too, written out of such stress & intensity of painful emotion as wrenches from us inmost truth. I cannot face the thought of these words of uttermost trust & love having fallen into other hands. Can both be simply lost? Could any man suffer a base curiosity, to make him so meanly, treacherously cruel? It seems to cut and then burn me. I was not disappointed at the shortness of your letter & I do not ask nor even wish you to write save when you are inwardly impelled & desirous of doing so. I only want leave and security to write freely to you. Your book does indeed say all--book that is not a book, for the first time a man complete, godlike, august, standing revealed the only way possible, through the garment of speech. Do you know, dear Friend, what it means for a woman, what it means for me, to understand these poems? It means for her whole nature to be then first kindled; quickened into life through such love, such sympathy, such resistless attraction, that thenceforth she cannot choose but live & die striving to become worthy to share this divine man's life--to be his dear companion, closer, nearer, dearer than any man can be--for ever so. Her soul stakes all on this. It is the meaning, the fulfilment, the only perfect development & consummation of her nature--of her passionate, high, immortal aspirations--her Soul to mate with his for ever & ever. O I know the terms are obdurate--I know how hard to attain to this greatness, the grandest lot ever aspired to by woman. I know too my own shortcomings, faults, flaws. You might not be able to give me your great love yet--to take me to your breast with joy. But I can wait. I can grow great & beautiful through sorrow & suffering, working, struggling, yearning, loving so, all alone, as I have done now nearly three years--it will be three in May since I first read the book, first knew what the word _love_ meant. Love & Hope are so strong in me, my soul's high aspirations are of such tenacious, passionate intensity, are so conscious of their own deathless reality, that what would starve them out of any other woman only makes them strike out deeper roots, grow more resolute & sturdy, in me. I know that "greatness will not ripen for me like a pear." But I could face, I could joyfully accept, the fiercest anguish, the hardest toil, the longest, sternest probation, to make me fit to be your mate--so that at the last you should say, "This is the woman I have waited for, the woman prepared for me: this is my dear eternal comrade, wife--the one I so much want." Life has no other meaning for me