Dearest: Here comes a letter to you from me flying in the opposite
direction. I won't say I am not wishing to go; but oh, to be a bird in two
places at once! Give this letter, then, a special nesting-place, because I
am so much on the wing elsewhere.
I shut my eyes most of the time through France, and opened them on a
soup-tureen full of coffee which presented itself at the frontier: and
then realized that only a little way ahead lay Berne, with baths, buns,
bears, breakfast, and other nice things beginning with B, waiting to make
us clean, comfortable, contented, and other nice things beginning with C.
Through France I loved you sleepy fashion, with many dreams in between not
all about you. But now I am breathing thoughts of you out of a new
atmosphere--a great gulp of you, all clean-living and high-thinking
between these Alpine royal highnesses with snow-white crowns to their
heads: and no time for a word more about anything except you: you, and
double-you,--and treble-you if the alphabet only had grace to contain so
beautiful a symbol! Good-by: we meet next, perhaps, out of Lucerne: if
not,--Italy.
What a lot I have to go through before we meet again visibly! You will
find me world-worn, my Beloved! Write often.