The writing of that letter gave me a pleasure second only to that which the reading of his brought . For the first time I discovered the delight of revealing my thought unhindered by the conventions . Also , I understood better why the writer of those letters had written them . Doubtless he had enjoyed doing so and was not impelled thereto simply by a purely philanthropic wish to help me . When my letter was finished I sealed it up and locked it away in my desk with a smile at my middle-aged folly . What , I wondered , would all my sedate , serious friends , my associates of mission and hospital committees think if they knew . Well , everybody has , or should have , a pet nonsense in her life . I did not think mine was any sillier than some others I knew , and to myself I admitted that it was very sweet . I knew if those letters ceased to come all savour would go out of my life . After that I wrote a reply to every letter I received and kept them all locked up together . It was delightful . I wrote out all my doings and perplexities and hopes and plans and wishes -- yes , and my dreams . The secret romance of it all made me look on existence with joyous , contented eyes . Gradually a change crept over the letters I received . Without ever affording the slightest clue to the identity of their writer they grew more intimate and personal . A subtle , caressing note of tenderness breathed from them and thrilled my heart curiously . I felt as if I were being drawn into the writer 's life , admitted into the most sacred recesses of his thoughts and feelings . Yet it was all done so subtly , so delicately , that I was unconscious of the change until I discovered it in reading over the older letters and comparing them with the later ones . Finally a letter came -- my first love letter , and surely never was a love letter received under stranger circumstances . It began abruptly as all the letters had begun , plunging into the middle of the writer 's strain of thought without any preface .
The first words drove the blood XXXXX my heart and then sent it flying hotly all over my face .
After For Without at by of over than that to