ost-mark, September 13, 1845.]

Now, dearest, I will try and write the little I shall be able, in
reply to your letter of last week--and first of all I have to entreat
you, now more than ever, to help me and understand from the few words
the feelings behind them--(should _speak_ rather more easily, I
think--but I dare not run the risk: and I know, after all, you will be
just and kind where you can.) I have read your letter again and
again. I will tell you--no, not _you_, but any imaginary other person,
who should hear what I am going to avow; I would tell that person most
sincerely there is not a particle of fatuity, shall I call it, in that
avowal; cannot be, seeing that from the beginning and at this moment I
never dreamed of winning your _love_. I can hardly write this word, so
incongruous and impossible does it seem; such a change of our places
does it imply--nor, next to that, though long after, _would_ I, if I
_could_, supplant one of any of the affections that I know to have
taken root in you--_that_ great and solemn one, for instance. I feel
that if I could get myself _remade_, as if turned to gold, I WOULD not
even then desire to become more than the mere setting to _that_
diamond you must always wear. The regard and esteem you now give me,
in this letter, and which I press to my heart and bow my head upon, is
all I can take and all too embarrassing, using _all_ my gratitude. And
yet, with that contented pride in being infinitely your debtor as it
is, bound to you for ever as it is; when I read your letter with all
the determination to be just to us both; I dare not so far withstand
the light I am master of, as to refuse seeing that whatever is
recorded as an objection to your disposing of that life of mine I
would give you, has reference to some supposed good in that life which
your accepting it would destroy (of which fancy I shall speak
presently)--I say, wonder as I may at this, I cannot but find it
there, surely there. I could no more 'bind _you_ by words,' than you
have bound me, as you say--but if I misunderstand you, one assurance
to that effect will be but too intelligible to me--but, as it _is_, I
have difficulty in imagining that while one of so many reasons, which
I am not obliged to repeat to myself, but which any one easily
conceives; while _any one_ of those reasons would impose silence on me
_for ever_ (for, as I observed, I love you as you now are, and _would_
not remove one affection that is a