What am I writing now? Arguing, justifying, defending? Ah, were it possible that you would read this and come back to me, never, never, though it killed me, would I open my heart to you! I write only to a dead man, I say--to one who can never hear. I write once more to a man who set other things above all that I could have done. Deeds, deeds, what you call your country--your own impulses--these were the things you placed above me. You placed above me this adventuring into the wilderness. Yes, I know what are the real impulses in your man's life. I know what you valued above me.
But you are dead! While you lived, I hoped your conscience was clean. I hope that never once have you descended to any conduct not belonging to Meriwether Lewis of Virginia. I know that no matter what temptation was yours, you would remember that I was Mrs. Alston--and that you were Meriwether Lewis of Virginia.
Nay, I cannot stop! How can you mind my garrulous pen--my vain pen--my wicked, wicked, wicked, shameful pen--since you cannot see what it says?
Ah, I had so hoped once more to see you before it was too late! Should this not reach you, and should it reach others, why, let it go to all the world that Theodosia Burr that was, Mrs. Alston of Carolina that is, once ardently importuned a man to join her in certain plans for the betterment of his fortunes as well as her own; and that you did not care to share in those plans! So I failed. And further--let that also go out to the world--I glory in the truth that I have failed!
Yes, that at last is the truth at the bottom of my heart! I have searched it to the bottom, and I have found the truth. I glory in the truth that you have not come back to me. There--have I not said all that a woman could say to a man, living or dead?
Just as strongly as I have urged you to return, just as strongly I have hoped that you would not return! In my soul I wanted to see you go on in your own fashion, following your own dreams and caring not for mine. That was the Meriwether Lewis I had pictured to myself. I shall glory in my own undoing, if it has meant your success.
Holding to your own ambition, keeping your own loyalty, holding your own counsel and your own speech to the end--pushing on through everything to what you have set out to do--that is the man I could have loved! Deeds, deeds, high accomplishments--these in truth are the things which are to prevail. The selfish love of success as success--the love of ease, of money, of power--these are the things women covet from a man--yes, but they are not the things a woman loves in a man. No; it is the stiff-necked man, bound in his own ambition, whom women love, even as they swear they do not.