plunge secure into a calm inviting sea; provided only you are unalterably the same, provided you love with the same ardor with which you write, and this noble flame never changes into cold lifeless ashes. I am not so much afraid of the winds that disappoint my earnest wishes, as of your love, that it may prove, like the wind, changeable and inconstant. I fear the not being held in the same esteem; that the dangers may be thought greater than the reward, or that I am accounted too mean a recompence of your toil. Sometimes I am uneasy, from an idea that my country may detract from me, and that a Thracian girl may seem an unequal match for a citizen of Abydos. Yet I can patiently bear any affliction whatever, sooner than the apprehension of your being detained by another flame. Ah! let me rather perish, than suffer under so cruel a distress; may fate end my days before I hear of the dreadful crime!
Nor do I mention this from any reason you give me to suspect approaching grief, or because I am alarmed by some new spreading rumor. But I am subject to every fear; (for when did love yet settle in a quiet mind?) distance and absence feed my anxious thoughts. Happy they, who, always together, know at once what they have to fear, nor feel the piercing grief of false alarms. We are as much disturbed by unjust fears, as ignorant of real injuries; and each error begets equal anxiety.
