Now, for once, I did hold off and didn't write to you: because there was something in your last I couldn't give any answer to, and I hoped you would come yourself before I need. Then I hoped silence would bring you: and now--no!--instead of your dear peace-giving face I get this complaint!
Ah, Beloved, have you in reality any complaint, or sorrow that I can set at rest? Or has that little, little silence made you anxious? I do come to think so, for you never flourish your words about as I do: so, believing that, I would like to write again differently; only it is truer to let what I have written stand, and make amends for it in all haste. I love you so infinitely well, how could even a year's silence give you any doubt or anxiety, so long as you knew I was not ill?
"Should one not make great concessions to great grief even when it is unreasonable?" I cannot answer, dearest: I am in the dark. Great grief cannot be great without reasons: it should give them, and you should judge by them:--you, not I. I imagine you have again been face to face with fierce, unexplained opposition. Dearest, if it would give you happiness, I would say, make five, ten, twenty years' "concession," as you call it. But the only time you ever spoke to me clearly about your mother's mind toward me, you said she wanted an absolute surrender from you, not covered only by her lifetime. Then though I pitied her, I had to smile. A twenty years' concession even would not give rest to her perturbed spirit. I pray truly--having so much reason for your sake to pray it--"God rest her soul! and give her a saner mind toward both of us."
Why has this come about at all? It is not February yet: and _our_ plans have been putting forth no buds before their time. When the day comes, and you have said the inevitable word, I think more calm will follow than you expect. _You_, dearest, I do understand: and the instinct of tenderness you have toward a claim which yet fills you with the sense of its injustice. I know that you can laugh at her threat to make you poor; but not at hurting her affections. Did your asking for an "answer" mean that I was to write so openly? Bless you, my own dearest.
Dearest: To-day I came upon a strange spectacle: poor old Nan-nan weeping for wounded pride in me. I found her stitching at raiment of needlework that is to be mine (piles of it have been through her fingers since the word first went out; for her love asserts that I am to go all home-made from my old home to my new one--wherever that may be!). And she was weeping because, as I slowly got to understand, from one particular quarter too little attention had been paid to me:--the kow-tow of a ceremonious reception into my new status had not been deep enough to make amends to her heart for its partial loss of me.