Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, January 17, 1846.]

Our letters have crossed; and, mine being the longest, I have a right
to expect another directly, I think. I have been calculating: and it
seems to me--now what I am going to say may take its place among the
paradoxes,--that I gain most by the short letters. Last week the only
long one came last, and I was quite contented that the 'old friend'
should come to see you on Saturday and make you send me two instead of
the single one I looked for: it was a clear gain, the little short
note, and the letter arrived all the same. I remember, when I was a
child, liking to have two shillings and sixpence better than half a
crown--and now it is the same with this fairy money, which will never
turn all into pebbles, or beans, whatever the chronicles may say of
precedents.

Arabel did tell Mr. Kenyon (she told me) that 'Mr. Browning would soon
go away'--in reply to an observation of his, that 'he would not stay
as I had company'; and altogether it was better,--the lamp made it
look late. But you do not appear in the least remorseful for being
tempted of my black devil, my familiar, to ask such questions and
leave me under such an impression--'mens conscia recti' too!!--

And Mr. Kenyon will not come until next Monday perhaps. How am I? But
I am too well to be asked about. Is it not a warm summer? The weather
is as 'miraculous' as the rest, I think. It is you who are unwell and
make people uneasy, dearest. Say how you are, and promise me to do
what is right and try to be better. The walking, the changing of the
air, the leaving off Luria ... do what is right, I earnestly beseech
you. The other day, I heard of Tennyson being ill again, ... too ill
to write a simple note to his friend Mr. Venables, who told George. A
little more than a year ago, it would have been no worse a thing to me
to hear of your being ill than to hear of his being ill!--How the
world has changed since then! To _me_, I mean.

Did I say _that_ ever ... that 'I knew you must be tired?' And it was
not even so true as that the coming event threw its shadow before?

_Thursday night._--I have begun on another sheet--I could not write
here what was in my heart--yet I send you this paper besides to show
how I was writing to you this morning. In the midst of it came a
female friend of mine and broke the thread--the visible thread, that
is.

And now, even now, at this safe eight o'clock,