I did not think you were angry—­I never said so.  But you might reasonably have been wounded a little, if you had suspected me of blaming you for any bearing of yours towards myself; and this was the amount of my fear—­or rather hope ... since I conjectured most that you were not well.  And after all you did think ... do think ... that in some way or for some moment I blamed you, disbelieved you, distrusted you—­or why this letter?  How have I provoked this letter?  Can I forgive myself for having even seemed to have provoked it? and will you believe me that if for the past’s sake you sent it, it was unnecessary, and if for the future’s, irrelevant?  Which I say from no want of sensibility to the words of it—­your words always make themselves felt—­but in fulness of purpose not to suffer you to hold to words because they have been said, nor to say them as if to be holden by them.  Why, if a thousand more such words were said by you to me, how could they operate upon the future or present, supposing me to choose to keep the possible modification of your feelings, as a probability, in my sight and yours?  Can you help my sitting with the doors all open if I think it right?  I do attest to you—­while I trust you, as you must see, in word and act, and while I am confident that no human being ever stood higher or purer in the eyes of another, than you do in mine,—­that you would still stand high and remain unalterably my friend, if the probability in question became a fact, as now at this moment.  And this I must say, since you have said other things:  and this alone, which I have said, concerns the future, I remind you earnestly.

My dearest friend—­you have followed the most generous of impulses in your whole bearing to me—­and I have recognised and called by its name, in my heart, each one of them.  Yet I cannot help adding that, of us two, yours has not been quite the hardest part ...  I mean, to a generous nature like your own, to which every sort of nobleness comes easily.  Mine has been more difficult—­and I have sunk under it again and again:  and the sinking and the effort to recover the duty of a lost position, may have given me an appearance of vacillation and lightness, unworthy at least of you, and perhaps of both of us.  Notwithstanding which appearance, it was right and just (only just) of you, to believe in me—­in my truth—­because I have never failed to you in it, nor been capable of such failure:  the thing I have said, I have meant ... always:  and in things I have not said, the silence has had a reason somewhere different perhaps from where you looked for it.  And this brings me to complaining that you, who profess to believe in me, do yet obviously believe that it was only merely silence, which I required of you on one occasion—­and that if I had ’known your power over yourself,’ I should not have minded ... no!  In other words you believe of me that I was thinking just of my own (what shall