Rose, Blanche, and Violet, Volume III by George Henry Lewes

Les lettres d'amour ne portent l'émotion que dans le cœur qui / inspire et qui partage le feu qui les a dictées. Par elles-mêmes / elles se ressemblent toutes: mais chaque être épris d'amour trouve / dans celle qui lui est adressée une puissance irrésistible, une / nouveauté incomparable. / GEORGE SAND. -- _La Comtesse de Rudolstadt._

Your letter, dearest Marmaduke, was a great joy to me, but the joy was dashed with pain as I came to the close, and read there the hope you express of our speedy union. No, that cannot be. Oh, do you not feel that it cannot be? do you not feel that it does not depend upon my love, but upon the irrevocable past? I thought I had made you understand all my feelings on this unhappy subject, and that I might write to you freely without awakening in either of us a hope which cannot be gratified. Your letter has greatly pained me; pained me because you seem to think that, inasmuch as we both love, we must be united -- that love will bear down all obstacles and triumph at last. But no; that cannot be. If there were the remotest chance of it, do you think I should not catch at such a hope with all the impatient eagerness of love? Have I nothing to subdue? Have I no temptations to overcome? Think, Marmaduke, my noble Marmaduke, think of what I have suffered and must still suffer when I look upon our fate, and yet can say, am forced to say, we must never meet! I fled from London, fled from you, because I feared the insidious counsels of my heart. My reason tells me that I acted rightly -- do you not feel so too?