It is more
difficult to explain what you meant to me. Can you understand if I say
you've been a constant goad to me? It would have been easier for me if I
had never seen you, because you have been the censor of my spirit ever
since. After you went away I was blazing with misery. I hadn't got so
far as you, you see. I was passionately wishing that I'd known you when
you were more on my level. And I saw that you had had a vision of me
that was very much better than I shall ever be now. As Oliver Wendell
Holmes wrote, there are three Marcellas--the one Marcella herself knows,
the one the people round about know, and the one God knows. That was the
one you saw for a minute and, not to disappoint you, I've had to live up
to it. It hasn't been easy. As you will see from his letter, even Louis
doesn't need me now. And as for my boy--I know now, that though beasts
claw at his life and colds and hungers and desolations come to him, they
cannot put out the shine of him. But for me it has been very lonely. I
wanted to be the thing of soft corners and seduction that you were
sickened of. I had to rip myself to bits and make myself the rather
rarefied sort of thing you demanded. I didn't dare not to be brave,
because you were so much enthroned in my life that every thought was a
deliberate homage to you. I might have got considerably happy, and found
many thrills out of thinking about you softly, imagining kisses,
adventures, perhaps.
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