Dearest, did I write you a cold letter the last time?  Almost it seems so to me! the reason being that my feelings were near to overflow, and that I had to hold the cup straight to prevent the possible dropping on your purple underneath. Your letter, the letter I answered, was in my heart ... is in my heart—­and all the yeses in the world would not be too many for such a letter, as I felt and feel.  Also, perhaps, I gave you, at last, a merely formal distinction—­and it comes to the same thing practically without any doubt! but I shrank, with a sort of instinct, from appearing (to myself, mind) to take a security from your words now (said too on an obvious impulse) for what should, would, must, depend on your deliberate wishes hereafter.  You understand—­you will not accuse me of over-cautiousness and the like.  On the contrary, you are all things to me, ... instead of all and better than all!  You have fallen like a great luminous blot on the whole leaf of the world ... of life and time ... and I can see nothing beyond you, nor wish to see it.  As to all that was evil and sadness to me, I do not feel it any longer—­it may be raining still, but I am in the shelter and can scarcely tell.  If you could be too dear to me you would be now—­but you could not—­I do not believe in those supposed excesses of pure affections—­God cannot be too great.

Therefore it is a conditional engagement still—­all the conditions being in your hands, except the necessary one, of my health.  And shall I tell you what is ’not to be put in doubt ever’?—­your goodness, that is ... and every tie that binds me to you.  ’Ordained, granted by God’ it is, that I should owe the only happiness in my life to you, and be contented and grateful (if it were necessary) to stop with it at this present point.  Still I do not—­there seems no necessity yet.

May God bless you, ever dearest:—­

Your own BA.

E.B.B. to R.B.

Saturday.
[In the same envelope with the preceding letter.]

Well I have your letter—­and I send you the postscript to my last one, written yesterday you observe ... and being simply a postscript in some parts of it, so far it is not for an answer.  Only I deny the ’flying out’—­perhaps you may do it a little more ... in your moments of starry centrifugal motion.

So you think that dear Mr. Kenyon’s opinion of his ’young relative’—­(neither young nor his relative—­not very much of either!) is to the effect that you couldn’t possibly ‘escape’ her—?  It looks like the sign of the Red Dragon, put so ... and your burning mountain is not too awful for the scenery.

Seriously ... gravely ... if it makes me three times happy that you should love me, yet I grow uneasy and even saddened when you say infatuated things such as this and this ... unless after all you mean a philosophical sarcasm on the worth of Czar diamonds.  No—­do not say such things!  If you do, I shall end by being jealous of some ideal Czarina who must stand between you and me....  I shall think that it is not I whom you look at ... and pour cause.  ‘Flying out,’ that would be!