My ‘Act Fourth’ is done—­but too roughly this time!  I will tell you—­

One kiss more, dearest!

Thanks for the Review.

R.B. to E.B.B.

                              Sunday.
                              [Post-mark, January 12, 1846.]

I have no words for you, my dearest,—­I shall never have.

You are mine, I am yours.  Now, here is one sign of what I said ... that I must love you more than at first ... a little sign, and to be looked narrowly for or it escapes me, but then the increase it shows can only be little, so very little now—­and as the fine French Chemical Analysts bring themselves to appreciate matter in its refined stages by millionths, so—!  At first I only thought of being happy in you,—­in your happiness:  now I most think of you in the dark hours that must come—­I shall grow old with you, and die with you—­as far as I can look into the night I see the light with me.  And surely with that provision of comfort one should turn with fresh joy and renewed sense of security to the sunny middle of the day.  I am in the full sunshine now; and after, all seems cared for,—­is it too homely an illustration if I say the day’s visit is not crossed by uncertainties as to the return through the wild country at nightfall?—­Now Keats speaks of ’Beauty, that must die—­and Joy whose hand is ever at his lips, bidding farewell!’ And who spoke of—­looking up into the eyes and asking ’And how long will you love us’?—­There is a Beauty that will not die, a Joy that bids no farewell, dear dearest eyes that will love for ever!

And I—­am to love no longer than I can.  Well, dear—­and when I can no longer—­you will not blame me?  You will do only as ever, kindly and justly; hardly more.  I do not pretend to say I have chosen to put my fancy to such an experiment, and consider how that is to happen, and what measures ought to be taken in the emergency—­because in the ‘universality of my sympathies’ I certainly number a very lively one with my own heart and soul, and cannot amuse myself by such a spectacle as their supposed extinction or paralysis.  There is no doubt I should be an object for the deepest commiseration of you or any more fortunate human being.  And I hope that because such a calamity does not obtrude itself on me as a thing to be prayed against, it is no less duly implied with all the other visitations from which no humanity can be altogether exempt—­just as God bids us ask for the continuance of the ‘daily bread’!—­’battle, murder and sudden death’ lie behind doubtless.  I repeat, and perhaps in so doing only give one more example of the instantaneous conversion of that indignation we bestow in another’s case, into wonderful lenity when it becomes our own, ... that I only contemplate the possibility you make me recognize, with pity, and fear ... no anger at all; and imprecations