You are good and kind, ... too good and kind, ... always, always!—and I love you gratefully and shall to the end, and with an unspeakable apprehension of what you are in yourself, and towards me:—yet you cannot, you know,—you know you cannot, dearest ... ‘submit’ to me in an opinion, any more than I could to you, if I desired it ever so anxiously. We will talk no more however on this subject now. I have had some pain from it, of course ... but I am satisfied to have had the pain, for the knowledge ... which was as necessary as possible, under circumstances, for more reasons than one.
Dearest ... before I go to talk of something else ... will you be besought of me to consider within yourself, ... and not with me to teaze you; why the ‘case,’ spoken of, should ‘never in likelihood be your own?’ Are you and yours charmed from the influence of offensive observations ... personally offensive? ‘The most unhappy thing that could happen to you,’ is it, on that account, the farthest thing?
Now—! Mrs. Jameson was here to-day, and in the room before, almost, I heard of her being on the stairs. It is goodnatured of her to remember me in her brief visits to London—and she brought me two or three St. Sebastians with the arrows through them, etched by herself, to look at—very goodnatured! Once she spoke of you—‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you saw Mr. Browning’s last number! yes, I remember how you spoke of it. I suppose Mr. Kenyon lent you his copy’.... And before I could speak, she was on another subject. But I should not have had heart to say what I meant and predetermined to say, even if the opportunity to-day had been achieved. As if you could not be read except in Mr. Kenyon’s copy! I might have confessed to my own copy, even if not to my own original ... do you not think?
Before she came, I went down to the drawing-room, I and Flush, and found no one there ... and walked drearily up and down the rooms, and, so, came back to mine. May you have spent your day better. There was sunshine for you, as I could see. God bless you and keep you. Saturday may be clear for us, or may not—and if it should not be clear, certainly Monday and Tuesday will not ... what shall be done? Will you wait till Wednesday? or will you (now let it be as you choose!) come on Saturday, running the risk of finding only a parcel ... a book and a letter ... and so going away, if there should be reasons against the visit. Because last Monday was known of, and I shall not ascertain until Saturday whether or not we shall be at liberty. Or ... shall we at once say Wednesday? It is for your decision. You go out on Saturday evening ... and perhaps altogether there may be a conspiracy against Saturday. Judge and decide.
I am writing as with the point of a pilgrim’s staff rather than a pen. ‘We are all strangers and pilgrims.’ Can you read anywise?
I think of you, bless you, love you—but it would have been better for you never to have seen my face perhaps, though Mr. Kenyon gave the first leave. Perhaps!!—I ‘flatter’ myself to-night, in change for you.
Best beloved I am your
Ba.