Those who speak so, I think, have never come across a real case of woman's friendship. I praise my own sex, dearest, for I know some of their loneliness, which you do not: and until a certain date their friendship was the deepest thing in life I had met with.

For must it not be true that a woman becomes more absorbed in friendship than a man, since friendship may have to mean so much more to her, and cover so far more of her life, than it does to the average man? However big a man's capacity for friendship, the beauty of it does not fill his whole horizon for the future: he still looks ahead of it for the mate who will complete his life, giving his body and soul the complement they require. Friendship alone does not satisfy him: he makes a bigger claim on life, regarding certain possessions as his right.

But a woman:—oh, it is a fashion to say the best women are sure to find husbands, and have, if they care for it, the certainty before them of a full life. I know it is not so. There are women, wonderful ones, who come to know quite early in life that no men will ever wish to make wives of them: for them, then, love in friendship is all that remains, and the strongest wish of all that can pass through their souls with hope for its fulfillment is to be a friend to somebody.

It is man's arrogant certainty of his future which makes him impatient of the word "friendship": it cools life to his lips, he so confident that the headier nectar is his due!

I came upon a little phrase the other day that touched me so deeply: it said so well what I have wanted to say since we have known each other. Some peasant rhymer, an Irishman, is singing his love's praises, and sinks his voice from the height of his passionate superlatives to call her his "share of the world." Peasant and Irishman, he knew that his fortune did not embrace the universe: but for him his love was just that—his share of the world.

Surely when in anyone's friendship we seem to have gained our share of the world, that is all that can be said. It means all that we can take in, the whole armful the heart and senses are capable of, or that fate can bestow. And for how many that must be friendship—especially for how many women!

My dear, you are my share of the world, also my share of Heaven: but there I begin to speak of what I do not know, as is the way with happy humanity. All that my eyes could dream of waking or sleeping, all that my ears could be most glad to hear, all that my heart could beat faster to get hold of—your friendship gave me suddenly as a bolt from the blue.

My friend, my friend, my friend! If you could change or go out of my life now, the sun would drop out of my heavens: I should see the world with a great piece gashed out of its side,—my share of it gone. No, I should not see it, I don't think I should see anything ever again,—not truly.

Is it not strange how often to test our happiness we harp on sorrow? I do: don't let it weary you. I know I have read somewhere that great love always entails pain. I have not found it yet: but, for me, it does mean fear,—the sort of fear I had as a child going into big buildings. I loved them: but I feared, because of their bigness, they were likely to tumble on me.

But when I begin to think you may be too big for me, I remember you as my "friend," and the fear goes for a time, or becomes that sort of fear I would not part with if I might.

I have no news for you: only the old things to tell you, the wonder of which ever remains new. How holy your face has become to me: as I saw it last, with something more than the usual proofs of love for me upon it—a look as if your love troubled you! I know the trouble: I feel it, dearest, in my own woman's way. Have patience.—When I see you so, I feel that prayer is the only way given me for saying what my love for you wishes to be. And yet I hardly ever pray in words.

Dearest, be happy when you get this: and, when you can, come and give my happiness its rest. Till then it is a watchman on the lookout.

"Night-night!" Your true sleepy one.

LETTER VIII.

Now why, I want to know, Beloved, was I so specially "good" to you in my last? I have been quite as good to you fifty times before,—if such a thing can be from me to you. Or do you mean good for you? Then, dear, I must be sorry that the thing stands out so much as an exception!

Oh, dearest Beloved, for a little I think I must not love you so much, or must not let you see it.

When does your mother return, and when am I to see her? I long to so much. Has she still not written to you about our news?

I woke last night to the sound of a great flock of sheep going past. I suppose they were going by forced marches to the fair over at Hylesbury: It was in the small hours: and a few of them lifted up their voices and complained of this robbery of night and sleep in the night. They were so tired, so tired, they said: and so did the muffawully patter of their poor feet. The lambs said most; and the sheep agreed with a husky croak.

I said a prayer for them, and went to sleep again as the sound of the lambs died away; but somehow they stick in my heart, those sad sheep driven along through the night. It was in its degree like the woman hurrying along, who said, "My God, my God!" that summer Sunday morning. These notes from lives that appear and disappear remain endlessly; and I do not think our hearts can have been made so sensitive to suffering we can do nothing to relieve, without some good reason. So I tell you this, as I would any sorrow of my own, because it has become a part of me, and is underlying all that I think to-day.

I am to expect you the day after to-morrow, but "not for certain"? Thus you give and you take away, equally blessed in either case. All the same, I shall certainly expect you, and be disappointed if on Thursday at about this hour your way be not my way.

"How shall I my true love know" if he does not come often enough to see me? Sunshine be on you all possible hours till we meet again.

LETTER IX.

Beloved: Is the morning looking at you as it is looking at me? A little to the right of the sun there lies a small cloud, filmy and faint, but enough to cast a shadow somewhere. From this window, high up over the view, I cannot see where the shadow of it falls,—further than my eye can reach: perhaps just now over you, since you lie further west. But I cannot be sure. We cannot be sure about the near things in this world; only about what is far off and fixed.

You and I looking up see the same sun, if there are no clouds over us: but we may not be looking at the same clouds even when both our hearts are in shadow. That is so, even when hearts are as close together as yours and mine: they respond to the same light: but each one has its own roof of shadow, wearing its rue with a world of difference.

Why is it? why can no two of us have sorrows quite in common? What can be nearer together than our wills to be one? In joy we are; and yet, though I reach and reach, and sadden if you are sad, I cannot make your sorrow my own.

I suppose sorrow is of the earth earthy: and all that is of earth makes division. Every joy that belongs to the body casts shadows somewhere. I wonder if there can enter into us a joy that has no shadow anywhere? The joy of having you has behind it the shadow of parting; is there any way of loving that would make parting no sorrow at all? To me, now, the idea seems treason! I cling to my sorrow that you are not here: I send up my cloud, as it were, to catch the sun's brightness: it is a kite that I pull with my heart-strings.

To the sun of love the clouds that cover absence must look