But what an awful suicide! never could my soul have expanded
in the life-giving rays of a beloved sun. No murmur should have
revealed to my father, or my mother, or my children the suicide of
the creature who at this instant is shaking her fetters, casting
lightnings from her eyes, and flying towards you with eager wing.
See, she is there, at the angle of your desk, like Polyhymnia,
breathing the air of your presence, and glancing about her with a
curious eye. Sometimes in the fields where my husband would have
taken me to walk, I should have wept, apart and secretly, at sight
of a glorious morning; and in my heart, or hidden in a
bureau-drawer, I might have kept some treasure, the comfort of poor
girls ill-used by love, sad, poetic souls,--but ah! I have _you_, I
believe in _you_, my friend. That belief straightens all my thoughts
and fancies, even the most fantastic, and sometimes--see how far
my frankness leads me--I wish I were in the middle of the book we
are just beginning; such persistency do I feel in my sentiments,
such strength in my heart to love, such constancy sustained by
reason, such heroism for the duties for which I was created,--if
indeed love can ever be transmuted into duty.
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