Anaïs Nin + Henry Miller

Anaïs, I don’t know how to tell you what I feel. I live in perpetual expectancy. You come and the time slips away in a dream. It is only when you go that I realize completely your presence. And then it is too late. You numb me.
. . .
This is a little drunken, Anais. I am saying to myself: ‘Here is the first woman with whom I can be absolutely sincere.’ I remember your saying: ‘You could fool me, I wouldn’t know it.’ When I walk along the boulevards and think of that, I can’t fool you – and yet I would like to. I mean that I can never be absolutely loyal – it’s not in me. I love women, or life, too much – which it is, I don’t know. But laugh, Anais…I love to hear you laugh. You are the only woman who has had a sense of gayety, a wise tolerance – no, more, you seem to urge me to betray you. I love you for that. And what makes you do that – love? Oh, it is beautiful to love, and to be free at the same time.
. . .
I don’t know what to expect of you, but it is something in the way of a miracle. I am going to demand everything of you – even the impossible, because you encourage it. You are really strong. I even like your deceit, your treachery. It seems aristocratic to me.
- Henry Miller, A Literate Passion : Letters of Anais Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953