Therefore decide! It seems quite too soon and too sudden for us to set out on our Italian adventure now—and perhaps even we could not compass—
Well—but you must think for both of us. It is past twelve and I have just a moment to seal this and entrust it to Henrietta for the morning’s post.
More than ever beloved, I am
Your own Ba.
I will do as you wish—understand.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, September 10, 1846.]
What do you expect this letter will be about, my own dearest? Those which I write on the mornings after our days seem naturally to answer any strong point brought out in the previous discourse, and not then completely disposed of ... so they generally run in the vile fashion of a disputatious ‘last word’; ‘one word yet’—do not they? Ah, but you should remember that never does it feel so intolerable,—the barest fancy of a possibility of losing you—as when I have just seen you and heard you and, alas—left you for a time; on these occasions, it seems so horrible—that if the least recollection of a fear of yours, or a doubt ... anything which might be nursed, or let grow quietly into a serious obstacle to what we desire—if that rises up threateningly,—do you wonder that I begin by attacking it? There are always a hundred deepest reasons for gratitude and love which I could write about, but which my after life shall prove I never have forgotten ... still, that very after-life depends perhaps on the letter of the morning reasoning with you, teazing, contradicting. Dearest Ba, I do not tell you that I am justified in plaguing you thus, at any time ... only to get your pardon, if I can, on the grounds—the true grounds.
And this pardon, if you grant it, shall be for the past offences, not for any fresh one I mean to commit now. I will not add one word to those spoken yesterday about the extreme perilousness of delay. You give me yourself. Hitherto, from the very first till this moment, the giving hand has been advancing steadily—it is not for me to grasp it lest it stop within an inch or two of my forehead with its crown.
I am going to Town this morning, and will leave off now.