Have you grown savage, my friend--have you come to be just a man like the others? Tell me--no, I will not ask you! If I thought you could descend to the lawless standard of the wilderness--but no, I cannot think of that! In any case, 'tis too late now. You have not come back to me.
You see, I am writing not so much to implore you to return as to reproach you for not returning. By the time this reaches you, it will be too late in our plans. We could not afford to wait months--three months, four, six--has it been so long as that since you left us? If so, it is too late now. If we have failed, why did we fail?
They told me--my father and his friends--and I told you plainly, that if your expedition went on, then our plan must fail. But now I must presume that you have succeeded, or by this time are beyond the feeling of either success or failure. If you have failed, it is too late for us to succeed. If you have succeeded, then certainly we have failed. As you read this, you may be doing so with hope. I, who wrote it, will be sitting in despair.
Meriwether Lewis, come back to me, even so! It will be too late for you to aid me. You will have ruined all our hopes. But yours still will be the task--the duty--to look me in the face and say whether you owe aught to me. Can I forgive you? Why, yes, I could never do aught else than forgive. No matter what you did, I fear I should forgive you. Because, after all, my own wish in all this---Ah! let me write slowly here, and think very carefully!
My greatest wish in this, greater than any ambition I had for myself or my family--has been for you! See, I am writing those words--would I dare tell them to any other man in all the world? Nay, surely not. But that I trust you, the very writing itself is proof. And I write this to you, who never can be to me what man must be to woman if either is to be happy--the man to whom I can never be what woman must be if she is to mean all to any man. Apart forever! We are estranged by circumstance, sundered by that, if you please, weak as those words seem. And yet something takes your soul to mine. Does something take mine to you, across all the wilderness, across all the miles, across all the long and bitter months?