Your own R.

E.B.B. to R.B.

[Post-mark, February 5, 1846.]

But I did not—­dear, dearest—­no indeed, I did not mean any harm about the letter.  I wanted to show you how you had given me pleasure—­and so,—­did I give you pain? was that my ingenuity?  Forgive my unhappiness in it, and let it be as if it had not been.  Only I will just say that what made me talk about ‘the thorn in the flesh’ from that letter so long, was a sort of conviction of your having put into it as much of the truth, your truth, as admitted of the ultimate purpose of it, and not the least, slightest doubt of the key you gave me to the purpose in question.  And so forgive me.  Why did you set about explaining, as if I were doubting you?  When you said once that it ’did not come and go,’—­was it not enough? enough to make me feel happy as I told you?  Did I require you to write a letter like this?  Now think for a moment, and know once for all, how from the beginning to these latter days and through all possible degrees of crisis, you have been to my apprehension and gratitude, the best, most consistent, most noble ... the words falter that would speak of it all.  In nothing and at no moment have you—­I will not say—­failed to me, but spoken or acted unworthily of yourself at the highest.  What have you ever been to me except too generous?  Ah—­if I had been only half as generous, it is true that I never could have seen you again after that first meeting—­it was the straight path perhaps.  But I had not courage—­I shrank from the thought of it—­and then ... besides ...  I could not believe that your mistake was likely to last,—­I concluded that I might keep my friend.

Why should any remembrance be painful to you?  I do not understand.  Unless indeed I should grow painful to you ...  I myself!—­seeing that every remembered separate thing has brought me nearer to you, and made me yours with a deeper trust and love.

And for that letter ... do you fancy that in my memory the sting is not gone from it?—­and that I do not carry the thought of it, as the Roman maidens, you speak of, their cool harmless snakes, at my heart always?  So let the poor letter be forgiven, for the sake of the dear letter that was burnt, forgiven by you—­until you grow angry with me instead—­just till then.

And that you should care so much about the opium!  Then I must care, and get to do with less—­at least.  On the other side of your goodness and indulgence (a very little way on the other side) it might strike you as strange that I who have had no pain—­no acute suffering to keep down from its angles—­should need opium in any shape.  But I have had restlessness till it made me almost mad:  at one time I lost the power of sleeping quite—­and even in the day, the continual aching sense of weakness has been intolerable—­besides palpitation—­as if one’s life, instead of giving movement to the body, were imprisoned undiminished