John became Anne's suitor and a frequent visitor to Wrentham. Anne was deeply, passionately in love:

Dearest Heart:-

...I am always a little shivery when you leave me, as if the spirit of death shut his wings over me; but the next moment the thought of your love for me brings a rush of life back to my heart....

....I sat a long time thinking of you, and trying to find a reason for your love for me. How wonderful it is! And how impossible to understand! Love is the very essence of life itself. Reason has nothing to do with it! It is above all things and stronger! For one long moment I gave myself up to the supremest happiness—The certainty of a love so strong that fate had no dominion over it and in that moment all the shadows of life became beautiful realities...
Nan

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And again, in another love letter she writes:

My own dear little Johnny;

I miss you very much. I suppose I should say, in the language of lovers, I think of you oftener than I breathe; but I don't, at least not consciously, though it's conceivable, isn't it, that one may so live in her lover that he becomes a part of the substance of her thoughts.

I'm lonely, but not utterly cast down, thanks to Carl who remembers me in the days of my bereavement. Still there are many lonely hours when I move with the careless majesty of a sometime goddess amid the ruins of joys that have been.

Haven't you had enough of New York? Idling about clubs and going to the opera isn't so very much fun, is it? Aren't you longing to come back to your twelve or fifteen hours of work every day—and me?

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