I know who has got it, caught it, and means to keep it on his heart—­the person most concerned—­I, dearest, who cannot play the disinterested part of bidding you forget your ‘protestation’ ... what should I have to hold by, come what will, through years, through this life, if God shall so determine, if I were not sure, sure that the first moment when you can suffer me with you ‘in that relation,’ you will remember and act accordingly.  I will, as you know, conform my life to any imaginable rule which shall render it possible for your life to move with it and possess it, all the little it is worth.

For your friends ... whatever can be ‘got over,’ whatever opposition may be rational, will be easily removed, I suppose.  You know when I spoke lately about the ‘selfishness’ I dared believe I was free from, I hardly meant the low faults of ...  I shall say, a different organization to mine—­which has vices in plenty, but not those.  Besides half a dozen scratches with a pen make one stand up an apparent angel of light, from the lawyer’s parchment; and Doctors’ Commons is one bland smile of applause.  The selfishness I deprecate is one which a good many women, and men too, call ’real passion’—­under the influence of which, I ought to say ’be mine, what ever happens to you’—­but I know better, and you know best—­and you know me, for all this letter, which is no doubt in me, I feel, but dear entire goodness and affection, of which God knows whether I am proud or not—­and now you will let me be, will not you.  Let me have my way, live my life, love my love.

When I am, praying God to bless her ever,

R.B.

E.B.B. to R.B.

[Post-mark, 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!

E.B.B. to R.B.

Friday.
[Post-mark, October 25, 1845.]

I wrote briefly yesterday not to make my letter longer by keeping it; and a few last words which belong to it by right, must follow after it ... must—­for I want to say that you need not indeed talk to me about squares being not round, and of you being not ‘selfish’!  You know it is foolish to talk such superfluities, and not a compliment.