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- 13692
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.924Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 13633
- text
- II.
"This morning I vowed it, my own dearest, dearest Pierre I feel stronger
to-day; for to-day I have still more thought of thine own superhuman,
angelical strength; which so, has a very little been transferred to me.
Oh, Pierre, Pierre, with what words shall I write thee now;--now, when
still knowing nothing, yet something of thy secret I, as a seer,
suspect. Grief,--deep, unspeakable grief, hath made me this seer. I
could murder myself, Pierre, when I think of my previous blindness; but
that only came from my swoon. It was horrible and most murdersome; but
now I see thou wert right in being so instantaneous with me, and in
never afterward writing to me, Pierre; yes, now I see it, and adore thee
the more.
"Ah! thou too noble and angelical Pierre, now I feel that a being like
thee, can possibly have no love as other men love; but thou lovest as
angels do; not for thyself, but wholly for others. But still are we one,
Pierre; thou art sacrificing thyself, and I hasten to re-tie myself to
thee, that so I may catch thy fire, and all the ardent multitudinous
arms of our common flames may embrace. I will ask of thee nothing,
Pierre; thou shalt tell me no secret. Very right wert thou, Pierre,
when, in that ride to the hills, thou wouldst not swear the fond,
foolish oath I demanded. Very right, very right; now I see it.
"If then I solemnly vow, never to seek from thee any slightest thing
which thou wouldst not willingly have me know; if ever I, in all outward
actions, shall recognize, just as thou dost, the peculiar position of
that mysterious, and ever-sacred being;--then, may I not come and live
with thee? I will be no encumbrance to thee. I know just where thou art,
and how thou art living; and only just there, Pierre, and only just so,
is any further life endurable, or possible for me. She will never
know--for thus far I am sure thou thyself hast never disclosed it to
her what I once was to thee. Let it seem, as though I were some
nun-like cousin immovably vowed to dwell with thee in thy strange exile.
Show not to me,--never show more any visible conscious token of love. I
will never to thee. Our mortal lives, oh, my heavenly Pierre, shall
henceforth be one mute wooing of each other; with no declaration; no
bridal; till we meet in the pure realms of God's final blessedness for
us;--till we meet where the ever-interrupting and ever-marring world can
not and shall not come; where all thy hidden, glorious unselfishness
shall be gloriously revealed in the full splendor of that heavenly
light; where, no more forced to these cruelest disguises, she, _she_ too
shall assume her own glorious place, nor take it hard, but rather feel
the more blessed, when, there, thy sweet heart, shall be openly and
unreservedly mine. Pierre, Pierre, my Pierre!--only this thought, this
hope, this sublime faith now supports me. Well was it, that the swoon,
in which thou didst leave me, that long eternity ago--well was it, dear
Pierre, that though I came out of it to stare and grope, yet it was only
to stare and grope, and then I swooned again, and then groped again, and
then again swooned. But all this was vacancy; little I clutched; nothing
I knew; 'twas less than a dream, my Pierre, I had no conscious thought
of thee, love; but felt an utter blank, a vacancy;--for wert thou not
then utterly gone from me? and what could there then be left of poor
Lucy?--But now, this long, long swoon is past; I come out again into
life and light; but how could I come out, how could I any way _be_, my
Pierre, if not in thee? So the moment I came out of the long, long
swoon, straightway came to me the immortal faith in thee, which though
it could offer no one slightest possible argument of mere sense in thy
behalf, yet was it only the more mysteriously imperative for that, my
Pierre. Know then, dearest Pierre, that with every most glaring earthly
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