He 's a softy , and no mistake . '' * * * * * Upstairs in his little room , the schoolmaster was writing his letter . The room was as bare and graceless as all the other rooms of the farmhouse where he had boarded during his term of teaching ; but it looked out on the sea , and was hung with such priceless tapestry of his iris dreams and visions that it was to him an apartment in a royal palace . From it he gazed afar on bays that were like great cups of sapphire brimming over with ruby wine for gods to drain , on headlands that were like amethyst , on wide sweeps of sea that were blue and far and mysterious ; and ever the moan and call of the ocean 's heart came up to his heart as of one great , hopeless love and longing crying out to another love and longing , as great and hopeless . And here , in the rose-radiance of the sunset , with the sea-music in the dim air , he wrote his letter to her . My Lady : How beautiful it is to think that there is nothing to prevent my loving you ! There is much -- everything -- to prevent me from telling you that I love you . But nothing has any right to come between my heart and its own ; it is permitted to love you forever and ever and serve and reverence you in secret and silence . For so much , dear , I thank life , even though the price of the permission must always be the secret and the silence . I have just come from you , my lady . Your voice is still in my ears ; your eyes are still looking into mine , gravely yet half smilingly , sweetly yet half provokingly . Oh , how dear and human and girlish and queenly you are -- half saint and half very womanly woman ! And how I love you with all there is of me to love -- heart and soul and brain , every fibre of body and spirit thrilling to the wonder and marvel and miracle of it ! You do not know it , my sweet , and you must never know it . You would not even wish to know it , for I am nothing to you but one of many friends , coming into your life briefly and passing out of it , of no more account to you than a sunshiny hour , a bird 's song , a bursting bud in your garden . But the hour and the bird and the flower gave you a little delight in their turn , and when you remembered them once before forgetting , that was their reward and blessing . That is all I ask , dear lady , and I ask that only in my own heart . I am content to love you and be forgotten . It is sweeter to love you and be forgotten than it would be to love any other woman and live in her lifelong remembrance : so humble has love made me , sweet , so great is my sense of my own unworthiness . Yet love must find expression in some fashion , dear , else it is only pain , and hence these letters to you which you will never read .
I put all my heart into them ; they are the best and highest XXXXX me , the buds of a love that can never bloom openly in the sunshine of your life .
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