That was not obtained, that promise, to be happy with, as last time!
How are you?—tell me, dearest; a long week is to be waited now!
Bless you, my own, sweetest Ba.
I am wholly your
R.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Thursday.
[Post-mark, January 15, 1846.]
Dearest, dearer to my heart minute by minute, I had no wish to give you pain, God knows. No one can more readily consent to let a few years more or less of life go out of account,—be lost—but as I sate by you, you so full of the truest life, for this world as for the next,—and was struck by the possibility, all that might happen were I away, in the case of your continuing to acquiesce—dearest, it is horrible—could not but speak. If in drawing you, all of you, closer to my heart, I hurt you whom I would—outlive ... yes,—cannot speak here—forgive me, Ba.
My Ba, you are to consider now for me. Your health, your strength, it is all wonderful; that is not my dream, you know—but what all see. Now, steadily care for us both—take time, take counsel if you choose; but at the end tell me what you will do for your part—thinking of me as utterly devoted, soul and body, to you, living wholly in your life, seeing good and ill only as you see,—being yours as your hand is,—or as your Flush, rather. Then I will, on my side, prepare. When I say 'take counsel'—I reserve my last right, the man's right of first speech. I stipulate, too, and require to say my own speech in my own words or by letter—remember! But this living without you is too tormenting now. So begin thinking,—as for Spring, as for a New Year, as for a new life.
I went no farther than the door with Mr. Kenyon. He must see the truth; and—you heard the playful words which had a meaning all the same.