hear, without fearing for me or yourself, that I am utterly contented ... (’grateful’ I have done with ... it must go—­) I accept what you give me, what those words deliver to me, as—­not all I asked for ... as I said ... but as more than I ever hoped for,—­all, in the best sense, that I deserve.  That phrase in my letter which you objected to, and the other—­may stand, too—­I never attempted to declare, describe my feeling for you—­one word of course stood for it all ... but having to put down some one point, so to speak, of it—­you could not wonder if I took any extreme one first ... never minding all the untold portion that led up to it, made it possible and natural—­it is true, ’I could not dream of that’—­that I was eager to get the horrible notion away from never so flitting a visit to you, that you were thus and thus to me on condition of my proving just the same to you—­just as if we had waited to acknowledge that the moon lighted us till we ascertained within these two or three hundred years that the earth happens to light the moon as well!  But I felt that, and so said it:—­now you have declared what I should never have presumed to hope—­and I repeat to you that I, with all to be thankful for to God, am most of all thankful for this the last of his providences ... which is no doubt, the natural and inevitable feeling, could one always see clearly.  Your regard for me is all success—­let the rest come, or not come.  In my heart’s thankfulness I would ...  I am sure I would promise anything that would gratify you ... but it would not do that, to agree, in words, to change my affections, put them elsewhere &c. &c.  That would be pure foolish talking, and quite foreign to the practical results which you will attain in a better way from a higher motive.  I will cheerfully promise you, however, to be ’bound by no words,’ blind to no miracle; in sober earnest, it is not because I renounced once for all oxen and the owning and having to do with them, that I will obstinately turn away from any unicorn when such an apparition blesses me ... but meantime I shall walk at peace on our hills here nor go looking in all corners for the bright curved horn!  And as for you ... if I did not dare ’to dream of that’—­, now it is mine, my pride and joy prevent in no manner my taking the whole consolation of it at once, now—­I will be confident that, if I obey you, I shall get no wrong for it—­if, endeavouring to spare you fruitless pain, I do not eternally revert to the subject; do indeed ‘quit’ it just now, when no good can come of dwelling on it to you; you will never say to yourself—­so I said—­’the “generous impulse” has worn itself out ... time is doing his usual work—­this was to be expected’ &c. &c.  You will be the first to say to me ’such an obstacle has ceased to exist ... or is now become one palpable to you, one you may try and overcome’—­and I shall be there, and ready—­ten years hence as now—­if alive.