John Timpane is an Inquirer editor

Strip away the politics. Strip away the circumstances. Love letters are in the news - the e-mails apparently exchanged between South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford and María Belén Chapur. Consider them as letters between two people caught in a fix they didn't see coming.

The messages were released June 25 by The State, a newspaper in Columbia, S.C. Passionate, persuasive, all but reckless, they may well join other historic love letters, such as Queen Mary II's to William III ("Adieu! do but love me and I can bear anything") or Sullivan Ballou's to his wife shortly before he died in the Battle of Bull Run ("But O, Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the gladdest days and in the darkest nights . . . always, always").

We make no excuses here. And, frankly, we wish the governor would shut up already. If he did, we could meditate on how, removed from the politics of the matter, the love of others makes us feel. And after reading these letters, we are compelled to feel differently about this affair than about other prominent political dalliances. This one may have been wrong, hypocritical, destructive to innocent families, politically suicidal - but the one thing it wasn't was sordid. It was sincere, it took both unawares, and it calls on something we might feel for any two people thus caught up: pity.

The first thing that hits you: These two are helpless. They know what they're doing is madness, and they don't care. She writes (and I quote verbatim, so we don't have those ugly, condescending sics): "I can think with my head but only feel with my heart so I can't avoid it even knowing is hopelessly impossible. . . . I don't know how we figure all this out and I am not interested in knowing. I prefer to think we'll see each other again somewhere sometime in this life and in next."

He writes: "How in the world this lightening strike snuck up on us I am still not quite sure. . . . it was all safe. Where we are is not. . . . In all my life I have lived by a code of honor and at a variety of levels know I have crossed lines I would have never imagined. I wish I could wish it away. . . ."

I believe them. It did sneak up on them. They appear to have traded messages for some time, and then, about a year ago, the real thunder struck. That's what these letters get across: It was real, real enough to risk the code of honor so important to him.

It's Chapur who has the most aware moment, the one that speaks for both of them with almost tragic resolve: "Sometimes you don't choose things, they just happen . . . I can't redirect my feelings and I am very happy with mine towards you."

Are there times when we can't choose, when it is not in our power to "redirect" feelings? When in such a fix, sometimes we do better, sometimes worse. We deserve no congratulations when we do well, but what do we merit when we don't? No one, I think, can say that at the moment of writing, Chapur did not sincerely believe in her helplessness.

Especially striking is how each begs the other for news, talks of the other's children, tells the other of his or her days. He begs for an account of her week. Remarkably, she narrates, down to the pineapple for lunch, a weekend she is spending on an island with another man, "a very nice guy, great heart . . . but unfortunately I am not in love with him . . . You are my love . . . something hard to believe even for myself . . ."

There is the high tension of longing - they are famished for each other - but also sincere regard, an interest in the other's life. She is the more self-possessed. She rests on a calm acceptance; he is in more distress, even quoting Corinthians 13. He does so, I think, because this beautiful passage, so often read in marriage services, both counsels strength and allows him an avenue of perhaps self-deluding hope: " 'Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes for all things and endures all things.' "

Each acknowledges they will and must spend their lives apart. That's what is so affecting: They're resigned, and it must be killing them. A cynic would retort, "Well, that's how you talk when you want to keep your sometime-honey on the hook." After reading these letters, I find that impossible to accept.

These letters teach us distinctions to be made. With Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, John Ensign, Eliot Spitzer, and too many others, one felt nausea more than anything else. Sometimes, only sadness. With others, anger might be more appropriate, especially where children were concerned. Masters of the universe, marrying egotism with hypocrisy with contempt.

The present case will play out as it will. Sanford's wife, Jenny, suffers more from knowing the love was real. But she has said she is open to rapprochement. It has already cost Chapur public grief; it may or may not cost Sanford his family, marriage, and career. These letters, however, urge on us the distinction between unfeeling indulgence and rash yet honest unwisdom. The relation may be wrong, but it is not vicious. They may have been living all sorts of lies, but not because they don't care. It may deserve punishment, and it may draw fire, but it cannot deserve the spite reserved for empty heartlessness. It was "lightening." It was "impossible." It seemed to them they couldn't choose. That is the drama of these letters.

E-mail John Timpane at jt@phillynews.com.