Into the midnight they galloped abreast

drew us out into the night as witnesses.  And then, the ‘Duchess’ ... the conception of it was noble, and the vehicle, rhythm and all, most characteristic and individual ... though some of the rhymes ... oh, some of the rhymes did not find grace in his ears—­but the incantation-scene, ‘just trenching on the supernatural,’ that was taken to be ‘wonderful,’ ... ’showing extraordinary power, ... as indeed other things did ... works of a highly original writer and of such various faculty!’—­Am I not tired of writing your praises as he said then?  So I shall tell you, instead of any more, that I went down to the drawing-room yesterday (because it was warm enough) by an act of supererogatory virtue for which you may praise me in turn.  What weather it is! and how the year seems to have forgotten itself into April.

But after all, how have I answered your letter? and how are such letters to be answered?  Do we answer the sun when he shines?  May God bless you ... it is my answer—­with one word besides ... that I am wholly and ever your

E.B.B.

On Thursday as far as I know yet—­and you shall hear if there should be an obstacle. Will you walk? If you will not, you know, you must be forgetting me a little.  Will you remember me too in the act of the play?—­but above all things in taking the right exercise, and in not overworking the head.  And this for no serpent’s reason.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Two letters in one—­Wednesday.
[Post-mark, November 15, 1845.]

I shall see you to-morrow and yet am writing what you will have to read perhaps.  When you spoke of ‘stars’ and ‘geniuses’ in that letter, I did not seem to hear; I was listening to those words of the letter which were of a better silver in the sound than even your praise could be; and now that at last I come to hear them in their extravagance (oh such pure extravagance about ’glorious geniuses’—­) I can’t help telling you they were heard last, and deserved it.

Shall I tell you besides?—­The first moment in which I seemed to admit to myself in a flash of lightning the possibility of your affection for me being more than dream-work ... the first moment was that when you intimated (as you have done since repeatedly) that you cared for me not for a reason, but because you cared for me.  Now such a ‘parceque’ which reasonable people would take to be irrational, was just the only one fitted to the uses of my understanding on the particular question we were upon ... just the ‘woman’s reason’ suitable to the woman ...; for I could understand that it might be as you said, and, if so, that it was altogether unanswerable ... do you see?  If a fact includes its own cause ... why there it stands for ever—­one of ’earth’s immortalities’—­as long as it includes it.