And the reason—! and it could seem a reasonable matter of doubt to you whether I would go to the south for my health’s sake!—­And I answered quite a common ‘no’ I believe—­for you bewildered me for the moment—­and I have had tears in my eyes two or three times since, just through thinking back of it all ... of your asking me such questions.  Now did I not tell you when I first knew you, that I was leaning out of the window?  True, that was—­I was tired of living ... unaffectedly tired.  All I cared to live for was to do better some of the work which, after all, was out of myself, and which I had to reach across to do.  But I told you.  Then, last year, for duty’s sake I would have consented to go to Italy! but if you really fancy that I would have struggled in the face of all that difficulty—­or struggled, indeed, anywise, to compass such an object as that—­except for the motive of your caring for it and me—­why you know nothing of me after all—­nothing!  And now, take away the motive, and I am where I was—­leaning out of the window again.  To put it in plainer words (as you really require information), I should let them do what they liked to me till I was dead—­only I wouldn’t go to Italy—­if anybody proposed Italy out of contradiction.  In the meantime I do entreat you never to talk of such a thing to me any more.

You know, if you were to leave me by your choice and for your happiness, it would be another thing.  It would be very lawful to talk of that.

And observe!  I perfectly understand that you did not think of doubting me—­so to speak!  But you thought, all the same, that if such a thing happened, I should be capable of doing so and so.

Well—­I am not quarrelling—­I am uneasy about your head rather.  That pain in it—­what can it mean?  I do beseech you to think of me just so much as will lead you to take regular exercise every day, never missing a day; since to walk till you are tired on Tuesday and then not to walk at all until Friday is not taking exercise, nor the thing required.  Ah, if you knew how dreadfully natural every sort of evil seems to my mind, you would not laugh at me for being afraid.  I do beseech you, dearest!  And then, Sir John Hanmer invited you, besides Mr. Warburton, and suppose you went to him for a very little time—­just for the change of air? or if you went to the coast somewhere.  Will you consider, and do what is right, for me?  I do not propose that you should go to Italy, observe, nor any great thing at which you might reasonably hesitate.  And—­did you ever try smoking as a remedy?  If the nerves of the head chiefly are affected it might do you good, I have been thinking.  Or without the smoking, to breathe where tobacco is burnt,—­that calms the nervous system in a wonderful manner, as I experienced once myself when, recovering from an illness, I could not sleep, and tried in vain all sorts of narcotics and forms of hop-pillow and inhalation, yet was tranquillized in one half hour by a pinch of tobacco being burnt in a shovel near me.  Should you mind it very much? the trying I mean?