Don't think I am ungrateful. You
have made a great difference already to my life; but you have made
me suffer too. I know that like Telemachus in Tennyson's poem you
will be 'decent not to fail in offices of tenderness'--I know I can
depend on you to do everything that is kind and considerate and
just. You won't disappoint me. You will do out of a natural
kindliness and courtesy what many people can only do by loving. You
don't claim things, you don't lay hands on things; and it looks so
like unselfishness that it seems detestable of me to say anything.
But you will have to give yourself away, and I don't think you have
ever done that. I can say all this, my dear, because I love you, as
a mother might; you are my son indeed; but there is something in
you that will have to be broken; we have all of us to be broken. It
isn't that you have anything to repent of. You would take endless
trouble to help anyone who wanted help, you would be endlessly
patient and tender and strong; but you do not really know what love
means, because it does not hurt or wound you. You are like
Achilles, was it not, who had been dipped in the river of death,
and you are invulnerable. You won't, I know, resent my saying this?
I know you won't--and the fact that you will not makes it harder
for me to say it--but I almost wish it WOULD wound you, instead of
making you think how you can amend it. You can't amend it, but God
and love can; only you must dare to let yourself go.
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