I WRITE a great many letters to the dear anemone lady. I send some of them to her and others I keep to read myself. I like to read letters that I have written—particularly that I have written to her.
This is a letter that I wrote two days ago to my one friend:
"To you:—
"And don't you know, my dearest, my friendship with you contains other things? It contains infatuation, and worship, and bewitchment, and idolatry, and a tiny altar in my soul-chamber whereon is burning sweet incense in a little dish of blue and gold.
"Yes, all of these.
"My life is made up of many outpourings. All the outpourings have one point of coming-together. You are the point of coming-together. There is no other.
"You are the anemone lady.
"You are the one whom I may love.
"To think that the world contains one beautiful human being for me to love!
"It is wonderful.
"My life is longing for the sight of you. My senses are aching for lack of an anemone to diffuse itself among them.
"A year ago, when you were in the high school, often I used to go over there when you would be going home, so that my life could be made momentarily replete by the sight of you. You didn't know I was there—only a few times when I spoke to you.
"And now it is that I remember you.
"Oh, my dearest—you are the only one in the world!
"We are two women. You do not love me, but I love you.
"You have been wonderfully, beautifully kind to me.
"You are the only one who has ever been kind to me.
"There is something delirious in this—something of the nameless quantity.
"It is old grief and woe to live nineteen years and to remember no person ever to have been kind. But what is it—do you think?—at the end of nineteen years, to come at last upon one who is wonderfully, beautifully kind!
"Those persons who have had some one always to be kind to them can never remotely imagine how this feels.
"Sometimes in these spring days when I walk miles down into the country to the little wet gulch of the sweet-flags, I wonder why it is that this thing does not make me happy. 'She is wonderfully, beautifully kind,' I say to myself—'and she is the anemone lady. She is wondrously kind, and though she's gone, nothing can ever change that.'
"But I am not happy.
"Oh, my one friend—what is the matter with me? What is this feeling? Why am I not happy?
"But how can you know?
"You are beautiful.
"I am a small, vile creature.
"Always I awake to this fact when I think of the anemone lady.
"I am not good.
"But you are kind to me—you are kind to me—you are kind to me.
"You have written me two letters.
"The anemone lady came down from her high places and wrote me two letters.
"It is said that God is somewhere. It may be so.
"But God has never come down from his high places to write me two letters.
"Dear—do you see?—you are the only one in the world.