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good spirits again - remember for example this summer when Stan jumped me a couple of times. I pour a lot of this out to you in my letter as you've seen, but some of the little [pin-pichs?] are too tiny to mention, and it's better to talk them out right away. Also MA helps me keep my big mouth shut sometimes so that I don't make such an ass of myself in class or in meetings, etc. This is the sort of thing I was trying to tell you in my earlier letter, because I want you to know how I'm living, so that you feel closer to me and this doesn't come from describing cathedrals or concerns, however important they are as part of the experience.

And now to the most important thing. Sweetheart, my love for you has grown so very much in the last 2 months; it permeats my whole life. It's such a pure and beautiful thing, so solid, so much bigger than I am, and I find so much meaning, strength and joy in our love--all the power that carries my life along. I can't imagine any more how I could have been alive and content without you, and I know that our lives in the future are completely woven together, to grow in love and peace and fulfillment in each other. And as I think about this, and about your letter before me, I realize too the importance that our symbolic physical union has. I told you long ago how special it felt to be with your first love, the first and only to have really kissed your lips and entered your heart. And darling, you are more than you may know (though I'm sure you must know intuitively) my very first and only - yes, I've kissed mayed half a dozen others, but I never gave of myself to them - that has been only for you, my dearest darling, and always will be. I cherish this sense of purity, of mutual committment (of virginity in a larger but also spiritual sense) very closely. I hold myself completely to be given only to you my dearest - I am all and only yours and you all and only mine, both now and in the growing, miraculous union that we begin in marriage. So my darling Anne, if I hold MAC's hand or flirt or tease with others (as I did occasionally with Deanna, etc.) I do so in a very different sense than I hold your hand or flirt with you (often as much to make them happier as for any other reason), and I always keep my heart, my real self only for you. With them it's a game - sort of cat and mouse like - thats play; with you it's really me.

Darling, I'm almost crying right now, my feelings are so strong. But not sadness, and not joy exactly; rather sort of an awe, and overhwleming feeling from the magnitude and depth and beauty ofour sacred love. I do love you so very much, my darling, and I miss you an awful lot. But I can look ahead with so much joy to our long life ahead, that the next 3 months are like a few minutes, and besides I get so much from our love even while we're so apart that life is quite bearable and pleasant most of the time, and when it's sad it has a silver lining.

We're both pretty lucky people, honey, to have what we have together and I count the days until I can see your smiling face and touch your cheeks and hold you close - and even 100 isn't long!
I love you, "sweetie pie", always
your George