“Oh! my dearest love, why are our pleasures so short and so interrupted? How long is this to last?Know you, my best Mary, that I feel myself, in your absence, almost degraded to the level of the vulgar and impure. I feel their vacant, stiff eyeballs fixed upon me, until I seem to have been infected with their loathsome meaning--to inhale a sickness that subdues me to languor. Oh! those redeeming eyes of Mary, that they might beam upon me before I sleep! Praise my forbearance--oh! beloved one--that I do not rashly fly to you, and at least secure a moment's bliss. Wherefore should I delay; do you not long to meet me? All that is exalted and buoyant in my nature urges me towards you, reproaches me with the cold delay, laughs at all fear and spurns to dream of prudence. Why am I not with you?”

“...your soul can never be long going to the fixed stars, where I intend to settle; or else you may find me in the milky way.”

“...you have not only a very large portion of my affection and esteem, but all that I am capable of feeling...”

“...nothing has humbled me so much as your love. Right or wrong it may be, but true it is, and I tell you. Your love has been to me like God's own love, which makes the receivers of it kneelers.”

“I had loved you all my life unaware, that is, the idea of you.”

“Dearest Alexia, Oh, please absolve me of this guilt I already feel squishing on my very soul! My troubled heart weeps! Oh dear, Ivy was getting flowery. My bones ache with the sin that I am about to commit. Oh, why must I have bones? I have lost myself to this transplanting love. You could not possibly understand how this feels! Yet try to comprehend, dearest Alexia, I am like a delicate bloom. Marriage without love is all very well for people like you, but I should wilt and wither. I need a man possessed of a poet’s soul! I am simply not so stoic as you. I cannot stand to be apart from him one moment longer! The caboose of my love has derailed, and I must sacrifice all for the man I adore! Please do not judge me harshly! It was all for love! ~ Ivy.”

“whilst you love me, I cannot again fall into that miserable state which renders life a burden almost too heavy to be borne.”