'Across space and time'

"Letter to Peter Claire from Countess O'Fingal

My dear Peter,
  I do not know if my letter ever reached you.
That any letter -- which is so insubstantial a thing -- reaches its destination, when I consider what routes it must take and what weather may fall upon its bearers, does make me marvel.

When Johnnie  O'Fingal once read to me the sad drama of Romeo and Juliet  and I understood that all was lost because that Friar Lawrence's letter to Romeo was lost, I remarked to Johnnie that we are ever and always searching for ways by which we can be joined to those we love across the immensity of space and time, but that these ways are fragile and surely on the winds and tides must move a great quantity of lost things that will never be found?"

Music and Silence  Rose Tremain