“We have nothing to do, we can do nothing, we must do nothing but love each other, love each other as much and as well as we can, until the end, in our own world, set apart from the rest, in our own island, and leaning on each other to make our love triumph by its only strength, by its only energy, in silence. Then, perhaps, and only then, will we have the right to make it shine in the eyes of all, in the knowledge and sight of all (what will that add to it, by the way?).
For the time being, we are paying. We have both committed a great sin, if there is any sin. We have pretended to love, we have even believed in it, we have accepted as authentic mirages of love, out of carelessness, perhaps, out of contempt, out of impatience, no doubt; out of lack of faith too. This we must pay for, and before reaching our paradise, we must earn it. Perhaps one day we will be allowed to go there: a lot of love can do so many miracles! Until then, it will be hard, I know it as well as you do.
For the time being, it is easy for me to imagine the clarity and goodness between us; but I know that hours will come when your presence and that of your life in you will make me bitter, wicked, selfish, badly rebellious, cruel, and will close me to our very love. This is where I am waiting for you to help me, and I know that although the task is not easy, you will know how to come out victorious, if you love me; you have already done it so many times.
For my part, I will try to do the same. That is why we must gather all our energy and strength, only for that, and we must do it with joy and hope. Listen to me, my darling; open yourself completely to me; I don't know how to express myself, I don't know how to speak and even less how to write, but everything I am saying to you here, I feel it so deeply that it must appear and reach you. I speak to you with my whole soul at the edge of my lips, after having thought a lot. I dreamed of a life with you and I swear that it costs me to renounce it, but precisely because it is so painful for me, you have to believe me.
If you think about my happiness, tell yourself that there is something more horrible than the sufferings I have experienced or can experience in the situation we are in: it is the excruciating heartbreak I would experience knowing you blurred with your conscience, half destroyed and leaning on an unearned love where I would feel alien and criminal. No, please, forget everything I have said, cover your ears when I shout more nasty phrases, love me hard, and prepare yourself in peace and light for the life that is given to us in sharing and whose destiny we only have to accept without faltering. This is how I have loved you. This is how I will always love you, and if you want to see me happy and great, even if only at times, this is the only way you can do it. I love you."
— Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Correspondance, July 18, 1949 [#72]