[Postmark: June 3, 1846]
Wednesday Morning.
I will tell you, dearest : your good is my good, and
your will mine ; if you were convinced that good would
be promoted by our remaining as we are for twenty
years instead of one, I should endeavour to submit in the
end . . after the natural attempts to find out and remove
the imagined obstacle. If, as you seem to do here, you
turn and ask about my good — yours being supposed to be
uninfluenced by what I answer . . then, here is my truth
on that subject, in that view, — my good for myself. Every
day that passes before that day is one the more of hardly
endurable anxiety and irritation, to say the least ; and the
thought of another year’s intervention of hope deferred —
altogether intolerable ! Is there anything I can do in that
year — or that you can do — to forward our object ? Any-
thing impossible to be done sooner ? If not —
You may misunderstand me now at first, dear, dearest
Ba : at first I sate quietly, you thought ; do I live quietly
now, do you think ? Ought I to show the evidence of the
unselfishness I strive, at least, to associate with my love, by
coolly informing you ‘ what would please me.’
But I will not say more, you must know . . and I seem
to know that this question was one of Ba’s old questions . .
a branch-licence, perhaps, of the original inestimable one,
that charter of my liberties, by which I am empowered to
‘ hold myself unengaged, unbound ‘ &c. &c.
Good Heaven ; I would not, — even to save the being
asked such questions, — have played the horseleech that
cries ‘ give, give,’ in Solomon’s phrase — ‘ Do you let me see
you once a week ? Give me a sight once a day ! — May I
dare kiss you ? Let me marry you to-morrow ! ‘
But to the end, the very end, I am yours : God knows
I would not do you harm for worlds — worlds ! I may
easily mistake what is harm or not. I will ask your leave to
speak — at your foot, my Ba : I would not have dared to
take the blessing of kissing your hand, much less your lip,
but that it seemed as if I was leading you into a mistake —
as did happen — and that you might fancy I only felt a
dreamy, abstract passion for a phantom of my own creating
out of your books and letters, and which only took your
name. . . That once understood, the rest you shall give me.
In every event, I am your own.
12 o’ clock. — I thought another letter might arrive. This
must go as we shall set off presently to Mr. Kenyon’s.
I did understand the question about my sister. I mean,
that you felt somewhat so, incredible as it seems — only I
believe all you say, all — to the letter, the iota. Think of
that, whenever I might ask and do not — or speak, and am
silent . . but I am getting back to the question discussed
above, which I ought not to do — understand me, dearest
dearest ! See me, open the eyes, the dear eyes, and see
the love of your R.