"Afterwhile, when Ray couldn't bear it any longer to talk to me, and in his desperation brazenly took Cora to the other end of the porch almost by force, and I was left, in a way, alone with you what did you think of me? I was tongue-tied! Oh, oh, oh!
You were quiet--but I_ was DUMB! My heart wasn't dumb--it hammered! All the time I kept saying to myself such a jumble of things. And into the jumble would come such a rapture that You were there--it was like a paean of happiness--a chanting of the glory of having You near me--I WAS mixed up! I could PLAY all those confused things, but writing them doesn't tell it. Writing them would only be like this: `He's here, he's HERE! Speak, you little fool! He's here, he's here! He's sitting beside you! SPEAK, idiot, or he'll never come back!
He's here, he's beside you you could put out your hand and touch him! Are you dead, that you can't speak? He's here, he's here, he's HERE!'
"Ah, some day I shall be able to talk to you--but not till I get more used to this inner song. It seems to WILL that nothing else shall come from my lips till IT does!
"In spite of my silence--my outward woodenness--you said, as you went away, that you would come again! You said `soon'! I could only nod but Cora called from the other end of the porch and asked: `HOW soon?' Oh, I bless her for it, because you said, `Day after to-morrow.' Day after tomorrow! Day after to-morrow! DAY AFTER TOMORROW!
. . . . "Twenty-one hours since I wrote--no, SANG--`Day after to-morrow!' And now it is `To-morrow!' Oh, the slow, golden day that this has been! I could not stay in the house--I walked--no, I WINGED! I was in the open country before I knew it--with You! For You are in everything. I never knew the sky was blue, before. Until now I just thought it was the sky.
The whitest clouds I ever saw sailed over that blue, and I stood upon the prow of each in turn, then leaped in and swam to the next and sailed with IT! Oh, the beautiful sky, and kind, green woods and blessed, long, white, dusty country road! Never in my life shall I forget that walk--this day in the open with my love--You! To-morrow! To-morrow! To-morrow! TOMORROW!"
The next writing in Laura's book was dated more than two months later:
. . . . "I have decided to write again in this book. I have thought it all out carefully, and I have come to the conclusion that it can do no harm and may help me to be steady and sensible.
It is the thought, not its expression, that is guilty, but I do not believe that my thoughts are guilty: I believe that they are good. I know that I wish only good. I have read that when people suffer very much the best thing is for them to cry. And so I'll let myself WRITE out my feelings--and perhaps get rid of some of the silly self-pity I'm foolish enough to feel, instead of going about choked up with it. How queer it is that even when we keep our thoughts respectable we can't help having absurd FEELINGS like self-pity, even though we know how rotten stupid they are! Yes, I'll let it all out here, and then, some day, when I've cured myself all whole again, I'll burn this poor, silly old book. And if I'm not cured before the wedding, I'll burn it then, anyhow.
