A Plea for Rosemary
"Looking back, I can see one thing that you may have missed. This love of ours has brought joy to you and to me, and, indirectly, happiness to my husband. It has not affected your mother, one way or another, but it has hurt Rosemary--taken away from her the one thing that made her sordid life worth while.
"Dear, can't you see your way clear to make it right with her--to give back at least as much as she had before I came into your life? You will take nothing from me by doing so, for my place with you is secure and beyond the reach of change, as you know yours is with me.
"But, just because the full moon has risen upon midnight, shall we refuse to look at the stars? Believe me, all the lesser loves have their rightful place, which should be more definitely assured because of the greater light.
Rosemary's Need
"I am pleading not only for her, but for you. Tell her everything, if you choose, or if you feel that you must in order to be honest. I am sure you can make her understand.
"The door of the House of Life is open for you and for me, but it is closed against her. It is in your power at least to set it ajar for her; to admit her, too, into full fellowship through striving and through love.
"She will help you with your vineyard people, and, perhaps, come to peace that way. Her unhappy face as I saw it last haunts me--I cannot help feeling that I am in some way responsible. She needs you and what you can give her, more, perhaps, than I, who shall never have it again.
"Never! The word, as I write it, tolls through my consciousness like a funeral knell. Never to see your face again, or to touch your hand, or to hear you say you love me. Never to feel your arms holding me close, your heart beating against mine, never to thrill with ecstasy in every fibre of me in answer to your kiss.
"Only the silence, broken, perhaps, by an occasional letter, and the call in the night, bridging the darkness and distance between us, to be answered for one little hour by love, surging from one to the other and back again.
Caught in a Web "And yet these thoughts of ours are as a weaver's shuttle, plying endlessly through the web of night and space and time. One thought may make a slender thread, indeed, but what of the countless thoughts that fly back and forth, weaving and interweaving as they go? Shall they not make first a thread, and then a cord, then a web, and then a fabric, until, at last, there is no separation, but that of the body, which counts for naught?