You would not speak the word you might have to keep.

Nay, dearest, what pains you so?
You gave me no pain, even when you called another to enforce your command.

Yet surely you know that _that_ must have tried my spirit far more than anything else you could do.

You did well.

Do you think that I did not appreciate your imperious anxiety for me; that I did not respect your resolution to do what you thought right, or feel how much it cost you?
If anything in the ways of love like yours could pain me, it would be the sort of reserved tenderness that never treats me as frankly and simply as" ...