Your own

E.B.B. to R.B.

Saturday Evening.
[Post-mark, February 16, 1846.]

Ever dearest, though you wanted to make me say one thing displeasing to you to-day, I had not courage to say two instead ... which I might have done indeed and indeed!  For I am capable of thinking both thoughts of ‘next year,’ as you suggested them:—­because while you are with me I see only you, and you being you, I cannot doubt a power of yours nor measure the deep loving nature which I feel to be so deep—­so that there may be ever so many ‘mores,’ and no ‘more’ wonder of mine!—­but afterwards, when the door is shut and there is no ‘more’ light nor speaking until Thursday, why then, that I do not see you but me,—­then comes the reaction,—­the natural lengthening of the shadows at sunset,—­and then, the ‘less, less, less’ grows to seem as natural to my fate, as the ‘more’ seemed to your nature—­I being I!

Sunday.—­Well!—­you are to try to forgive it all!  And the truth, over and under all, is, that I scarcely ever do think of the future, scarcely ever further than to your next visit, and almost never beyond, except for your sake and in reference to that view of the question which I have vexed you with so often, in fearing for your happiness.  Once it was a habit of mind with me to live altogether in what I called the future—­but the tops of the trees that looked towards Troy were broken off in the great winds, and falling down into the river beneath, where now after all this time they grow green again, I let them float along the current gently and pleasantly.  Can it be better I wonder!  And if it becomes worse, can I help it?  Also the future never seemed to belong to me so little—­never!  It might appear wonderful to most persons, it is startling even to myself sometimes, to observe how free from anxiety I am—­from the sort of anxiety which might be well connected with my own position here, and which is personal to myself. That is all thrown behind—­into the bushes—­long ago it was, and I think I told you of it before.  Agitation comes from indecision—­and I was decided from the first hour when I admitted the possibility of your loving me really.  Now,—­as the Euphuists used to say,—­I am ‘more thine than my own’ ... it is a literal truth—­and my future belongs to you; if it was mine, it was mine to give, and if it was mine to give, it was given, and if it was given ... beloved....

So you see!

Then I will confess to you that all my life long I have had a rather strange sympathy and dyspathy—­the sympathy having concerned the genus jilt (as vulgarly called) male and female—­and the dyspathy—­the whole class of heroically virtuous persons who make sacrifices of what they call ‘love’ to what they call ‘duty.’  There are exceptional cases of course, but, for the most part, I listen incredulously or else with a little