[M]y eyes moistened yesterday with your dear, dear letter in my hand. Was it foolish to kiss the senseless paper, to clasp it with the involuntary laugh of uncontrollable emotion? Don't you think one could go mad of pure longing?...

The speaker describes an almost involuntary, bodily response to a loved one’s letter—tears, kissing the page, clutching it, laughing—suggesting that written words can function as a physical surrogate for an absent person. The rhetorical questions (“Was it foolish…?” “Don’t you think…?”) dramatize self-consciousness about the intensity of feeling while also seeking validation from the addressee. The phrase “pure longing” frames desire as both exalted and dangerous: an emotion so concentrated it threatens sanity. Overall, the passage captures the paradox of epistolary intimacy—paper is “senseless,” yet it carries presence powerful enough to overwhelm the reader.