So we could not keep our sabbath to-day!  It is a fast day instead, ... on my part.  How should I feel (I have been thinking to myself), if I did not see you on Saturday, and could not hope to see you on Monday, nor on Tuesday, nor on Wednesday, nor Thursday nor Friday, nor Saturday again—­if all the sabbaths were gone out of the world for me!  May God bless you!—­it has grown to be enough prayer!—­as you are enough (and all, besides) for

Your own

BA.

R.B. to E.B.B.

[Post-mark, February 7, 1846.]

The clock strikes—­three; and I am here, not with you—­and my ‘fractious’ headache at the very worst got suddenly better just now, and is leaving me every minute—­as if to make me aware, with an undivided attention, that at this present you are waiting for me, and soon will be wondering—­and it would be so easy now to dress myself and walk or run or ride—­do anything that led to you ... but by no haste in the world could I reach you, I am forced to see, before a quarter to five—­by which time I think my letter must arrive.  Dear, dearest Ba, did you but know how vexed I am—­with myself, with—­this is absurd, of course.  The cause of it all was my going out last night—­yet that, neither, was to be helped, the party having been twice put off before—­once solely on my account.  And the sun shines, and you would shine—­

Monday is to make all the amends in its power, is it not?  Still, still I have lost my day.

Bless you, my ever-dearest.

Your R.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Sunday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 9, 1846.]

My dearest—­there are no words,—­nor will be to-morrow, nor even in the Island—­I know that!  But I do love you.

My arms have been round you for many minutes since the last word—­

I am quite well now—­my other note will have told you when the change began—­I think I took too violent a shower bath, with a notion of getting better in as little time as possible,—­and the stimulus turned mere feverishness to headache.  However, it was no sooner gone, in a degree, than a worse plague came.  I sate thinking of you—­but I knew my note would arrive at about four o’clock or a little later—­and I thought the visit for the quarter of an hour would as effectually prevent to-morrow’s meeting as if the whole two hours’ blessing had been laid to heart—­to-morrow I shall see you, Ba—­my sweetest.  But there are cold winds blowing to-day—­how do you bear them, my Ba? ‘Care’ you, pray, pray, care for all I care about—­and be well, if God shall please, and bless me as no man ever was blessed!  Now I kiss you, and will begin a new thinking of you—­and end, and begin, going round and round in my circle of discovery,—­My lotos-blossom! because they loved the lotos, were lotos-lovers,—­[Greek:  lotou t’ erotes], as Euripides writes in the [Greek:  Troades].

Your own