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'The bloom has vanished from my life'--there is no morning to this all
investing night; no rising to the set-sun of love. In those days the
rest of the world was nothing to me: all other men--I never
considered nor felt what they were; nor did I look on you as one of them.
Separated from them; exalted in my heart; sole possessor of my affections;
single object of my hopes, the best half of myself.
"Ah, Raymond, were we not happy? Did the sun shine on any, who could enjoy
its light with purer and more intense bliss? It was not--it is not a
common infidelity at which I repine. It is the disunion of an whole which
may not have parts; it is the carelessness with which you have shaken off
the mantle of election with which to me you were invested, and have become
one among the many. Dream not to alter this. Is not love a divinity,
because it is immortal? Did not I appear sanctified, even to myself,
because this love had for its temple my heart? I have gazed on you as you
slept, melted even to tears, as the idea filled my mind, that all I
possessed lay cradled in those idolized, but mortal lineaments before me.
Yet, even then, I have checked thick-coming fears with one thought; I would
not fear death, for the emotions that linked us must be immortal.
"And now I do not fear death. I should be well pleased to close my eyes,
never more to open them again. And yet I fear it; even as I fear all
things; for in any state of being linked by the chain of memory with this,
happiness would not return--even in Paradise, I must feel that your love
was less enduring than the mortal beatings of my fragile heart, every pulse
186
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