make it impossible such a relation could ever exist.
I know very well, if you choose to refer to my letters you may easily
bring them to bear a sense in parts, more agreeable to your own theory
than to mine, the true one--but that was instinct,
Providence--anything rather than foresight. Now I will convince you!
yourself have noticed the difference between the _letters_ and the
_writer_; the greater 'distance of the latter from you,' why was that?
Why, if not because the conduct _began_ with _him_, with one who had
now seen you--was no continuation of the conduct, as influenced by the
feeling, of the letters--else, they, if _near_, should have enabled
him, if but in the natural course of time and with increase of
familiarity, to become _nearer_--but it was not so! The letters began
by loving you after their way--but what a world-wide difference
between _that_ love and the true, the love from seeing and hearing and
feeling, since you make me resolve, what now lies blended so
harmoniously, into its component parts. Oh, I know what is old from
what is new, and how chrystals may surround and glorify other vessels
meant for ordinary service than Lord N's! But I _don't_ know that
handling may not snap them off, some of the more delicate ones; and if
you let me, love, I will not again, ever again, consider how it came
and whence, and when, so curiously, so pryingly, but believe that it
was always so, and that it all came at once, all the same; the more
unlikelinesses the better, for they set off the better the truth of
truths that here, ('how begot? how nourished?')--here is the whole
wondrous Ba filling my whole heart and soul; and over-filling it,
because she is in all the world, too, where I look, where I fancy. At
the same time, because all is so wondrous and so sweet, do you think
that it would be _so_ difficult for me to analyse it, and give causes
to the effects in sufficiently numerous instances, even to 'justify my
presentiment?' Ah, dear, dearest Ba, I could, could indeed, could
account for all, or enough! But you are unconscious, I do believe, of
your power, and the knowledge of it would be no added grace, perhaps!
So let us go on--taking a lesson out of the world's book in a
different sense. You shall think I love you for--(tell me, you must,
what for) while in my secret heart I know what my 'mission of
humanity' means, and what telescopic and microscopic views it procures
me. Enough--Wait, one word about the 'too k