AN ENGLISHWOMAN'S LOVE-LETTERS DELUXE EDITION LOVE-LETTERS 75

Dearest: There is always one possibility which I try to remember in all I
write: even where there is no hope a thing remains possible: that your
eye may some day come to rest upon what I leave here. And I would have
nothing so dark as to make it seem that I were better dead than to have
come to such a pass through loving you. If I felt that, dearest, I should
not be writing my heart out to you, as I do: when I cease doing that I
shall indeed have become dead and not want you any more, I suppose. How
far I am from dying, then, now!

So be quite sure that if now, even now, for to-day of all days has
seemed most dark if now I were given my choice to have known you or
not to have known you, Beloved, a thousand times I would claim to keep
what I have, rather than have it taken away from me. I cannot forget
that for a few months I was the happiest woman I ever knew: and that
happiness is perhaps only by present conditions removed from me. If I
have a soul, I believe good will come back to it: because I have done
nothing to deserve this darkness unless by loving you: and if by
loving you, I am glad that the darkness came.
Beloved, you have the yes and no to all this: I have not, and cannot
have. Something that you have not chosen for me to know, you know: it
should be a burden on your conscience, surely, not to have shared it
with me. Maybe there is something I know that you do not. In the way of
sorrow, I think and wish yes. In the way of love, I wish to think no.

Any more thinking wearies me. Perhaps we have loved too much, and have
lost our way out of our poor five senses, without having strength to
take over the new world which is waiting beyond them. Well, I would
rather, Beloved, suffer through loving too much, than through loving too
little. It is a good fault as faults go. And it is my fault, Beloved:
so some day you may have to be tender to it.







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Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen full text
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