A deadly, at least an incurable, wound

My words about a past disappointment are based on something I won't speak about - at least not now. And yet I think it right to tell you this much. Suppose a man experiences a disappointment through a cruel injury to his love, a disappointment so deep that he is calmly desperate and desolate - such a condition is possible, for there is something like the white heat of steel or iron. Feeling that he has been disappointed irrevocably and absolutely, and carrying within himself the consciousness of it as a deadly, at least an incurable, wound, and yet going about his ordinary affairs with an unruffled countenance... would it be inexplicable to you that a man in this condition should feel a singular sympathy, involuntary and unintentional, for somebody he meets who is deeply unhappy, oh, perhaps unhappy beyond redress? And that, notwithstanding this, that sympathy or love or tie should be and remain strong? When Love is dead, is it impossible for Charity to be alive and awake still?

To Anton von Rappard, from The Hague, 7 February 1883, Letter R21
Translation courtesy of Robert Harrison.
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