But when I ask myself whether this is really love--the sacred, all-pervading passion which a woman should feel for the man to whom she gives herself, body and soul, I encounter the strongest doubts.

These doubts have no reference to you--only to myself.

I feel that it would be a degradation--a deep profanation--for me to give myself to you, without feeling in its entirety such a love as I have attempted to define.

I have gone away from you because I want to consider this question and decide it with more calmness and impartiality than I can where I meet you daily, and daily receive some kindness from your hands.

These and the magnetism of your presence are temptations which I fear might swerve me from my ideal, and possibly lead to a mistake which we both might ever afterward have reason to regret.
I have, as you will be informed, accepted a detail to one of the hospitals at Nashville.