Yet while there were obstructions and winding ways in the shallows, in the depths were flawless truth and inviolable love.

What sentimental persons fancy and grow effusive over was here the simplest and yet always a miraculous reality--"He of the heavens and earth brought us together so wonderfully, holding two souls in his hand."[37] In the most illuminating words of each correspondent no merely private, or peculiar feeling is expressed; it is the common wave of human passion, the common love of man and woman, that here leaps from the depths to the height, and over which the iris of beauty ever and anon appears with--it is true--an unusual intensity.

And so in reading the letters we have no sense of prying into secrets; there are no secrets to be discovered; what is most intimate is most common; only here what is most common rises up to its highest point of attainment.

"I never thought of being happy through you or by you or in you even, your good was all my idea of good, and _is_" "Let me be too near to be seen....

Once I used to be more uneasy, and to think that I ought to _make_ you see me.