Ford, Paul Leicester: The Story of an Untold Love. v1. 8 Feb 2013
 

Paul Leicester Ford (March 23, 1865 - May 8, 1902) was an American novelist and biographer, born in Brooklyn.

Excerpt
February 20, 1890. There is not a moment of my life that you have shared with me which I cannot recall with a distinctness fairly sunlit. My joys and my sorrows, my triumphs and my failures, have faded one by one from emotions into memories, quickening neither pulse nor thought when they recur to me, while you alone can set both throbbing. And though for years I have known that if you enshrined any one in your heart it would be some one worthier of you, yet I have loved you truly, and whatever I have been in all else, in that one thing, at least, I have been strong. Nor wouldI part with my tenderness for you, even though it has robbed me of contentment; for all the pleasures of which I can dream cannot equal the happiness of loving you. To God I owe life, and you, Maizie, have filled that life with love; and to both I bow my spirit in thanks, striving not to waste his gift lest I be unworthy of the devotion I feel for you.