I could not have helped loving you . But if I could have helped it , knowing with just what measure of pain and joy it would brim my cup , I would have chosen to love you , Una . There are those who strive to forget a hopeless love . To me , the greatest misfortune that life could bring would be that I should forget you . I want to remember you always and love you and long for you . That would be unspeakably better than any happiness that could come to me through forgetting . Dear lady , good night . The sun has set ; there is now but one fiery dimple on the horizon , as if a golden finger had dented it -- now it is gone ; the mists are coming up over the sea . A kiss on each of your white hands , dear . Tonight I am too humble to lift my thoughts to your lips . The schoolmaster folded up his letter and held it against his cheek for a little space while he gazed out on the silver-shining sea with his dark eyes full of dreams . Then he took from his shabby trunk a little inlaid box and unlocked it with a twisted silver key . It was full of letters -- his letters to Una . The first had been written months ago , in the early promise of a northern spring . They linked together the golden weeks of the summer . Now , in the purple autumn , the box was full , and the schoolmaster 's term was nearly ended . He took out the letters reverently and looked over them , now and then murmuring below his breath some passages scattered through the written pages . He had laid bare his heart in those letters , writing out what he never could have told her , even if his love had been known and returned , for dead and gone generations of stern and repressed forefathers laid their unyielding fingers of reserve on his lips , and the shyness of dreamy , book-bred youth stemmed the language of eye and tone . I will love you forever and ever . And even though you know it not , surely such love will hover around you all your life .
Like an invisible benediction , not understood but dimly felt , guarding you from ill and keeping far XXXXX you all things and thoughts of harm and evil !
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