undly from the depths of my heart ... which is nearly all
I can do.

One letter I began to write and asked in it how it could become me to
speak at all if '_from the beginning and at this moment you never
dreamed of_' ... and there, I stopped and tore the paper; because I
felt that you were too loyal and generous, for me to bear to take a
moment's advantage of the same, and bend down the very flowering
branch of your generosity (as it might be) to thicken a little the
fence of a woman's caution and reserve. You will not say that you have
not acted as if you 'dreamed'--and I will answer therefore to the
general sense of your letter and former letters, and admit at once
that I _did_ state to you the difficulties most difficult to myself
... though not all ... and that if I had been worthier of you I should
have been proportionably less in haste to 'bid you leave that
subject.' I do not understand how you can seem at the same moment to
have faith in my integrity and to have doubt whether all this time I
may not have felt a preference for another ... which you are ready
'to serve,' you say. Which is generous in you--but in _me_, where were
the integrity? Could you really hold me to be blameless, and do you
think that truehearted women act usually so? Can it be necessary for
me to tell you that I could not have acted so, and did not? And shall
I shrink from telling you besides ... you, who have been generous to
me and have a right to hear it ... and have spoken to me in the name
of an affection and memory most precious and holy to me, in this same
letter ... that neither now nor formerly has any man been to my
feelings what you are ... and that if I were different in some
respects and free in others by the providence of God, I would accept
the great trust of your happiness, gladly, proudly, and gratefully;
and give away my own life and soul to that end. I _would_ do it ...
_not, I do_ ... observe! it is a truth without a consequence; only
meaning that I am not all stone--only proving that I am not likely to
consent to help you in wrong against yourself. You see in me what is
not:--_that_, I know: and you overlook in me what is unsuitable to you
... _that_ I know, and have sometimes told you. Still, because a
strong feeling from some sources is self-vindicating and ennobling to
the object of it, I will not say that, if it were proved to me that
you felt this for me, I would persist in putting the sense of my own
unworthiness