full meaning of, dramatic poet as you are ... cannot ... since you do not know what my life meant before you touched it, ... and my angel at the gate of the prison!  My wonder is greater than your wonders, ...  I who sate here alone but yesterday, so weary of my own being that to take interest in my very poems I had to lift them up by an effort and separate them from myself and cast them out from me into the sunshine where I was not—­feeling nothing of the light which fell on them even—­making indeed a sort of pleasure and interest about that factitious personality associated with them ... but knowing it to be all far on the outside of me ... myself ... not seeming to touch it with the end of my finger ... and receiving it as a mockery and a bitterness when people persisted in confounding one with another.  Morbid it was if you like it—­perhaps very morbid—­but all these heaps of letters which go into the fire one after the other, and which, because I am a woman and have written verses, it seems so amusing to the letter-writers of your sex to write and see ’what will come of it,’ ... some, from kind good motives I know, ... well, ... how could it all make for me even such a narrow strip of sunshine as Flush finds on the floor sometimes, and lays his nose along, with both ears out in the shadow?  It was not for me ... me ... in any way:  it was not within my reach—­I did not seem to touch it as I said.  Flush came nearer, and I was grateful to him ... yes, grateful ... for not being tired!  I have felt grateful and flattered ... yes flattered ... when he has chosen rather to stay with me all day than go down-stairs.  Grateful too, with reason, I have been and am to my own family for not letting me see that I was a burthen.  These are facts.  And now how am I to feel when you tell me what you have told me—­and what you ’could would and will’ do, and shall not do?... but when you tell me?

Only remember that such words make you freer and freer—­if you can be freer than free—­just as every one makes me happier and richer—­too rich by you, to claim any debt.  May God bless you always.  When I wrote that letter to let you come the first time, do you know, the tears ran down my cheeks....  I could not tell why:  partly it might be mere nervousness.  And then, I was vexed with you for wishing to come as other people did, and vexed with myself for not being able to refuse you as I did them.

When does the book come out?  Not on the first, I begin to be glad.

Ever yours,

E.B.B.

I trust that you go on to take exercise—­and that your mother is still better.  Occy’s worst symptom now is too great an appetite ... a monster-appetite indeed.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Tuesday.
[Post-mark, November 4, 1845.]

Only a word to tell you Moxon promises the books for to-morrow, Wednesday—­so towards evening yours will reach you—­’parve liber, sine me ibis’ ... would I were by you, then and ever!  You see, and know, and understand why I can neither talk to you, nor write to you now, as we are now;—­from the beginning, the personal interest absorbed every other, greater or smaller—­but as one cannot well,—­or should not,—­sit quite silently, the words go on, about Horne, or what chances—­while you are in my thought.