Dearest Clare, As I write this, I am sitting at my desk in the back bedroom looking out at your studio across the backyard full of blue evening snow, everything is smooth and crusty with ice, and it is very still. It's one of those winter evenings when the coldness of every single thing seems to slow down time, like the narrow center of an hourglass which time itself flows through, but slowly, slowly. I had a sudden urge, tonight, here in the house by myself to write you a letter. I suddenly wanted to leave something, for after. I think that time is short, now. I feel as though all my reserves, of energy, of pleasure, of duration, are thin, small. I don't feel capable of continuing very much longer. I know you know. If you are reading this, I am probably dead. But you know: you know that if I could have stayed, if I could have gone on, that I would have seized every second: whatever it was, this death, you know that it came and took me, like a child carried away by goblins  . Clare, I want to tell you, again, I love you. But I hate to think of you waiting. I know that you have been waiting for me all your life, always uncertain of how long this patch of waiting would be. Ten minutes, ten days. A month. What an uncertain husband I have been, Clare, like a sailor. Please, Clare. When I am dead, stop waiting and be free. Of me--put me deep inside you and then go out in the world and live. Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though the world is your natural element.  After my mom died she ate my father up completely. She would have hated it. Every minute of his life since then has been marked by her absence, every action has lacked dimension because she is not there to measure against. And when I was young I didn't understand, but now, I know, how absence can be present.  If I had to live on without you I know I could not do it. But I hope, I have this vision of you walking, with your shining hair in the sun. I have not seen this with my eyes, but only with my imagination, that makes pictures, that always wanted to paint you, shining; but I hope that this vision will be true, anyway.  Clare, there is one last thing, and I have hesitated to tell you, because I'm afraid that telling might cause it to not happen and also because I have just been going on about not waiting and this might cause you to wait longer than you have ever waited before. But I will tell you in case you need something, after.  Last summer, I was sitting in Kendrick's waiting room when I suddenly found myself in a dark hallway in a house I don't know. At the end of the hall I could see a rim of light around a door, and so I went very slowly and very quietly to the door and looked in. The room was white, and lit with morning sun. At the window, with her back to me, sat a woman, wearing a coral-color1ed cardigan sweater, with long white hair all down her back. She had a cup of tea beside her, on a table. I must have made some little noise, or she sensed me behind her...she turned and saw me, and I saw her, and it was you, Clare, this was you as an old woman, in the future. It was sweet, Clare, it was sweet beyond telling. I won't tell you any more, so you can imagine it. We will see each other again, Clare. Until then, live, fully, present in the world, which is so beautiful.  It's dark, now, and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing.  Henry By describing what he found in Kendrick's waiting room, Henry intended to tell Clare that   _  .
he hoped she would wait for him forever his health was worsening step by step she should stop waiting and be free to live she would be more beautiful when she was old