Isn’t it ungrateful of me? I think so.
I am glad, at least, that I do not appear to you ‘suspicious.’ Because I dislike suspicious people myself, and it has struck me often in the midst of the dislike.... ‘That is how I must appear to him.’ Ah—but you are too indulgent to me, my own dearest ... too dearest! ... and you draw crooked inferences for me, shutting both the eyes ... the near-sighted eye and far-sighted eye. Or is it, in that strange sight of yours, that I walk between the far and the near objects, in an invisible security? Or is it (which were best) that I am too near to be seen even by the near-sighted eye, ... like a hand brought close to the eyelashes, which, for over-closeness, nobody can see? Let me be too near to be seen—always too near!—dearest, dearest! Never will I complain that you do not see me! Be sure of that, now.
Once I used to be more uneasy, and to think that I ought to make you see me. But Love is better than Sight, and Love will do without Sight. Which I did not understand at first. I knew it was enough for me, that you should love me. That it was enough for you, I had to learn afterwards.
And ‘Grateful’ is my word and not yours. I am grateful to you, if to owe you all the sense of life, all the renewal of hope, all the possibility of happiness ... if to owe these things to another, consciously, feelingly, shall pass for gratitude, ... then I am grateful to you, Robert. Do you not know it, that I should say it again? For me, it seems to me that I can do nothing in return. To love you! Why no woman in the world could do less.
I am glad, both for the public and Tennyson, that his poems sell so well—and presently you will do as well or better—and I, half as well perhaps; so that we shall be too rich, which will spoil it all ... won’t it?
Mr. Horne sent me the Daily News to-day, ... the number containing his verses on Haydon ... and I cut from it an advertisement, for the purpose of bidding you observe that the land journey, or river-voyage, is very much cheaper than the sea-voyage by the steamers—unless the direct vessel to Leghorn should go as last year, and I fear it will not. The steamer-charges of the Oriental company are immense. Nineteen guineas to Gibraltar even! Twenty-eight, I think, to Naples. As for the advertisement, I send it only for what it suggests. And there is time enough for calculations, all ways suggestible.
May God bless you, dear, dear! How is the head? Shall it be better, without me, until Saturday? Say how it is.
Among all my visitors, the only one I expected, never came! No Mrs. Jameson again to-day!—
Dearest, I am your very own
Ba.