October 24, 1845.
‘And be forgiven‘ . . . yes! and be thanked besides — if I knew how to thank you worthily and as I feel . . . only that I do not know it, and cannot say it. And it was not indeed ‘doubt’ of you — oh no — that made me write as I did write; it was rather because I felt you to be surely noblest, . . . and therefore fitly dearest, . . . that it seemed to me detestable and intolerable to leave you on this road where the mud must splash up against you, and never cry ‘gare.’ Yet I was quite enough unhappy yesterday, and before yesterday . . . I will confess to-day, . . . to be too gratefully glad to ‘let you be’ . . . to ‘let you have your way’ — you who overcome always! Always, but where you tell me not to think of you so and so! — as if I could help thinking of you so, and as if I should not take the liberty of persisting to think of you just so. ‘Let me be’ — Let me have my way.’ I am unworthy of you perhaps in everything except one thing — and that, you cannot guess. May God bless you —
Ever I am yours.
The proof does not come!