t know it, and
cannot say it. And it was not indeed 'doubt' of you--oh no--that made
me write as I did write; it was rather because I felt you to be surely
noblest, ... and therefore fitly dearest, ... that it seemed to me
detestable and intolerable to leave you on this road where the mud
must splash up against you, and never cry 'gare.' Yet I was quite
enough unhappy yesterday, and before yesterday ... I will confess
to-day, ... to be too gratefully glad to 'let you be' ... to 'let you
have your way'--you who overcome always! Always, but where you tell me
not to think of you so and so!--as if I could help thinking of you
_so_, and as if I should not take the liberty of persisting to think
of you just so. 'Let me be'--Let me have my way.' I am unworthy of you
perhaps in everything except one thing--and _that_, you cannot guess.
May God bless you--

Ever I am yours.

The proof does not come!

_E.B.B. to R.B._

Friday.
[Post-mark, October 25, 1845.]

I wrote briefly yesterday not to make my letter longer by keeping it;
and a few last words which belong to it by right, must follow after it
... must--for I want to say that you need not indeed talk to me about
squares being not round, and of _you_ being not 'selfish'! You know it
is foolish to talk such superfluities, and not a compliment.

I won't say to my knowledge of you and faith in you ... but to my
understanding generally. Why should you say to me at all ... much
less for this third or fourth time ... 'I am not selfish?' to _me_ who
never ... when I have been deepest asleep and dreaming, ... never
dreamed of attributing to you any form of such a fault? Promise not to
say so again--now promise. Think how it must sound to my ears, when
really and truly I have sometimes felt jealous of myself ... of my own
infirmities, ... and thought that you cared for me only because your
chivalry touched them with a silver sound--and that, without them, you
would pass by on the other side:--why twenty times I have thought
_that_ and been vexed--ungrateful vexation! In exchange for which too
frank confession, I will ask for another silent promise ... a silent
promise--no, but first I will say another thing.

First I will say that you are not to fancy any the least danger of my
falling under displeasure through your visits--there is no sort of
risk of it _for the present_