Lawrence. Silence, unbroken silence, has been between us. I have
borne it, but oh how badly!--not calmly or with quiet self-control
and strength; but I have borne it with passionate out-cry and restless
struggles. I have sobbed myself to sleep at night: I have roamed
aimlessly about during the day, or lain on a lounge, book in hand,
pretending to read, but in reality listening, waiting, longing to hear
his step, his knock, to have some message, some sign, come to me from
him. Then it has seemed to me as if there was but one other human
creature in the world, and that was he--as if all the manifold needs
and wants, losses and gains, of humanity had no longer the slightest
meaning for me. I have no sense of any ambition, any aim, any
obligation pressing upon me. I find nothing within myself to feed upon
but a few pale memories of him, and my whole future seems concentred
in his existence. I do not think I can bear to live as I am now. It
is all profoundly dark to me. Why does he not come? I can think of no
possible explanation--none. I am resolved to think it out to an end,
and then act: it is this passiveness which is killing me.

I am resolved: I will write, and will ask him to come to me, and when
he comes I will say what I feel. Some mistaken hesitation is keeping
him away. I will say, "We love one another: let us unite our lives and
live them together, yoked in all exercise of noble end."

_Letter from Henry Lawrence to George Manning_.

DECEMBER 11.

DEAR GEORGE: I will begin by telling the truth, and here it is: I am
in a scrape. I know you won't think much of the simple fact, but the
scrape is very different from any of my former ones, and I don't see