For me, I adore you.  This is all unnecessary, I feel as I write:  but you will think of the main fact as ordained, granted by God, will you not, dearest?—­so, not to be put in doubt ever again—­then, we can go quietly thinking of after matters.  Till to-morrow, and ever after, God bless my heart’s own, own Ba.  All my soul follows you, love—­encircles you—­and I live in being yours.

E.B.B. to R.B.

                              Friday Morning.
                              [Post-mark, January 31, 1846.]

Let it be this way, ever dearest.  If in the time of fine weather, I am not ill, ... then ... not now ... you shall decide, and your decision shall be duty and desire to me, both—­I will make no difficulties.  Remember, in the meanwhile, that I have decided to let it be as you shall choose ... shall choose.  That I love you enough to give you up ‘for your good,’ is proof (to myself at least) that I love you enough for any other end:—­but you thought too much of me in the last letter.  Do not mistake me.  I believe and trust in all your words—­only you are generous unawares, as other men are selfish.

More, I meant to say of this; but you moved me as usual yesterday into the sunshine, and then I am dazzled and cannot see clearly.  Still I see that you love me and that I am bound to you:—­and ’what more need I see,’ you may ask; while I cannot help looking out to the future, to the blue ridges of the hills, to the chances of your being happy with me.  Well!  I am yours as you see ... and not yours to teaze you.  You shall decide everything when the time comes for doing anything ... and from this to then, I do not, dearest, expect you to use ’the liberty of leaping out of the window,’ unless you are sure of the house being on fire!  Nobody shall push you out of the window—­least of all, I.

For Italy ... you are right.  We should be nearer the sun, as you say, and further from the world, as I think—­out of hearing of the great storm of gossiping, when ‘scirocco is loose.’  Even if you liked to live altogether abroad, coming to England at intervals, it would be no sacrifice for me—­and whether in Italy or England, we should have sufficient or more than sufficient means of living, without modifying by a line that ‘good free life’ of yours which you reasonably praise—­which, if it had been necessary to modify, we must have parted, ... because I could not have borne to see you do it; though, that you once offered it for my sake, I never shall forget.

Mr. Kenyon stayed half an hour, and asked, after you went, if you had been here long.  I reproached him with what they had been doing at his club (the Athenaeum) in blackballing Douglas Jerrold, for want of something better to say—­and he had not heard of it.  There were more black than white balls, and Dickens was so enraged at the repulse of his friend that he gave in his own resignation like a privy councillor.