gh the tyranny of the
stronger and the hypocrisy of the weaker party. It never could be so
with _us_--_I know that_. But you grow awful to me sometimes with the
very excess of your goodness and tenderness, and still, I think to
myself, if you do not keep lifting me up quite off the ground by the
strong faculty of love in you, I shall not help falling short of the
hope you have placed in me--it must be 'supernatural' of you, to the
end! or I fall short and disappoint you. Consider this, beloved. Now
if I could put my soul out of my body, just to stand up before you
and make it clear.

I did go to the drawing-room to-day ... would ... should ... did. The
sun came out, the wind changed ... where was the obstacle? I spent a
quarter of an hour in a fearful solitude, listening for knocks at the
door, as a ghost-fearer might at midnight, and 'came home' none the
worse in any way. Be sure that I shall 'take care' better than you do,
and there, is the worst of it all--for _you_ let people make you ill,
and do it yourself upon occasion.

You know from my letter how I found you out in the matter of the
'Soul's Tragedy.' Oh! so bad ... so weak, so unworthy of your name! If
some other people were half a quarter as much the contrary!

And so, good-night, dear dearest. In spite of my fine speeches about
'recollections,' I should be unhappy enough to please you, with _only
those_ ... without you beside! I could not take myself back from being

Your own--

_R.B. to E.B.B._

[Post-mark, March 11, 1846.]

Dear, dear Ba, but indeed I _did_ return home earlier by two or three
good hours than the night before--and to find _no_ letter,--none of
yours! _That_ was reserved for this morning early, and then a rest
came, a silence, over the thoughts of you--and now again, comes this
last note! Oh, my love--why--what is it you think to do, or become
'afterward,' that you may fail in and so disappoint me? It is not very
unfit that you should thus punish yourself, and that, sinning by your
own ambition of growing something beyond my Ba even, you should 'fear'
as you say! For, sweet, why wish, why think to alter ever by a line,
change by a shade, turn better if that were possible, and so only rise
the higher above me, get further from instead of nearer to my heart?
What I expect, what I build my future on, am quite, quite prepared to
'risk' everything for,--i