I won’t say to my knowledge of you and faith in you ... but to my understanding generally.  Why should you say to me at all ... much less for this third or fourth time ...  ‘I am not selfish?’ to me who never ... when I have been deepest asleep and dreaming, ... never dreamed of attributing to you any form of such a fault?  Promise not to say so again—­now promise.  Think how it must sound to my ears, when really and truly I have sometimes felt jealous of myself ... of my own infirmities, ... and thought that you cared for me only because your chivalry touched them with a silver sound—­and that, without them, you would pass by on the other side:—­why twenty times I have thought that and been vexed—­ungrateful vexation!  In exchange for which too frank confession, I will ask for another silent promise ... a silent promise—­no, but first I will say another thing.

First I will say that you are not to fancy any the least danger of my falling under displeasure through your visits—­there is no sort of risk of it for the present—­and if I ran the risk of making you uncomfortable about that, I did foolishly, and what I meant to do was different.  I wish you also to understand that even if you came here every day, my brothers and sisters would simply care to know if I liked it, and then be glad if I was glad:—­the caution referred to one person alone.  In relation to whom, however, there will be no ’getting over’—­you might as well think to sweep off a third of the stars of Heaven with the motion of your eyelashes—­this, for matter of fact and certainty—­and this, as I said before, the keeping of a general rule and from no disrespect towards individuals:  a great peculiarity in the individual of course.  But ... though I have been a submissive daughter, and this from no effort, but for love’s sake ... because I loved him tenderly (and love him), ... and hoped that he loved me back again even if the proofs came untenderly sometimes—­yet I have reserved for myself always that right over my own affections which is the most strictly personal of all things, and which involves principles and consequences of infinite importance and scope—­even though I never thought (except perhaps when the door of life was just about to open ... before it opened) never thought it probable or possible that I should have occasion for the exercise; from without and from within at once.  I have too much need to look up.  For friends, I can look any way ... round, and down even—­the merest thread of a sympathy will draw me sometimes—­or even the least look of kind eyes over a dyspathy—­’Cela se peut facilement.’  But for another relation—­it was all different—­and rightly so—­and so very different—­’Cela ne se peut nullement’—­as in Malherbe.