Isn't love thousandfold? Isn't it like the sun that shines...

Isn't love thousandfold? Isn't it like the sun that shines on everything? Must love be stingy? Must love give everything to one person and take from the others... I don't know much about the two of you [Rilke and Clara]; but it seems to me that you have shed too much of your old self and spread it out like a cloak so that your king [Rilke] can walk on it. I wish for your sake and for the world and for art [Clara is sculptress] and also for my sake that you would wear your own golden cape again..

Paula Modersohn-Becker

In a letter to her friend, the sculptress Clara Rilke-Westhoff, Worpswede, 13 May 1901; as quoted in 'Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists'; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 202