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 to my heart and then sent it flying hotly all over my face . I love you . I must say it at last . Have you not guessed it before ? It has trembled on my pen in every line I have written to you -- yet I have never dared to shape it into words before . I know not how I dare now .
I only know XXXXX I must .
After as before if on than that to under until