Beloved: This is your first letter from me: yet it is not the first I have written to you. There are letters to you lying at love's dead-letter office in this same writing--so many, my memory has lost count of them!

This is my confession: I told you I had one to make, and you laughed:--you did not know how serious it was--for to be in love with you long before you were in love with me--nothing can be more serious than that!

You deny that I was: yet I know when you first really loved me. All at once, one day something about me came upon you as a surprise: and how, except on the road to love, can there be surprises? And in the surprise came love. You did not know me before. Before then, it was only the other nine entanglements which take hold of the male heart and occupy it till the tenth is ready to make one knot of them all.

In the letter written that day, I said, "You love me." I could never have said it before; though I had written twelve letters to my love for you, I had not once been able to write of your love for me. Was not that serious?

Now I have confessed! I thought to discover myself all blushes, but my face is cool: you have kissed all my blushes away! Can I ever be ashamed in your eyes now, or grow rosy because of anything you or I think? So!--you have robbed me of one of my charms: I am brazen. Can you love me still?

You love me, you love me; you are wonderful! we are both wonderful, you and I.