SUZANNE, ALL MINE,--As ever, I love, honour and obey. Take a month, if you will, before you speak the word. But I have settled it with the stars in their courses what the word must be. For ever, everywhere, you are Suzanne, all mine.
In her neighbourly good-nature and excellent wisdom, Miss Langley may choose for our meeting-place, Traxelby or London, or the Equator or the North Pole, or Sainte Véronique or the New Moon, or the summit of Mont Blanc or Ruddington Towers, or a coral island, or the Bottomless Pit, or the top of the Monument, or any other square yard she pleases. So long as Suzanne is there in the midst, the arid, scorching heat of the Sahara will be Eve's garden refreshed and guarded by the four streams of Paradise.
Suzanne has promised that she will come an inch to meet me. She shall never turn back alone.
But let not Suzanne mistake this perfect confidence of mine for vanity. I believe that Suzanne will run to be all mine, not because she gives herself lightly (for where is there a prouder than Suzanne?) and not because I am handsome, or desirable or magnetic. I am not magnetic, I am not desirable, I am not handsome. No. I believe that Suzanne must be all mine because I am all hers; because it is unthinkable that she should come close to the blaze of such a love as mine without herself taking fire.
Unless the Devil is torturing the world, such love as mine for Thee implies, requires, compels an equal love of thine for Me.
What a Suzanne this is, who is all mine! When I recall her face as I saw it in Traxelby church, what a wonderful, beautiful Suzanne! But, when I read her letters, I cry again, with threefold gratitude: what a beautiful, wonderful Suzanne! Her pride is as fine as the curl of a rose leaf; but her sweetness, like the rose's perfume, hovers over it all.
Not that Suzanne thinks that she has ever revealed herself in her letters. She believes that she has veiled herself in veils of prudence and reserve. But my eyes have found her out--have found her, more beautiful for her dissembling, like a great bright star hiding in the Milky Way.
Suzanne, it is no use hiding any longer. The hour has come for shining out without a cloud between. Do not wait for our meeting. Write to me, just once, without distrust of yourself or of me. I have obeyed, have I not, in all things? Reward me at last. Pour out your heart, even if it be a-brim with fears.