and endurance and
unabatedness ... the _truth_, in fact, of what had already been
professed, should get to be questioned--But I believe that you believe
me--And now that all is clear between us I will say, what you will
hear, without fearing for me or yourself, that I am utterly contented
... ('grateful' I have done with ... it must go--) I accept what you
give me, what those words deliver to me, as--not all I asked for ...
as I said ... but as more than I ever hoped for,--_all_, in the best
sense, that I deserve. That phrase in my letter which you objected to,
and the other--may stand, too--I never attempted to declare, describe
my feeling for you--one word of course stood for it all ... but having
to put down some one _point_, so to speak, of it--you could not wonder
if I took any extreme one _first_ ... never minding all the untold
portion that _led_ up to it, made it possible and natural--it is true,
'I could not dream of _that_'--that I was eager to get the horrible
notion away from never so flitting a visit to you, that you were thus
and thus to me _on condition_ of my proving just the same to you--just
as if we had waited to acknowledge that the moon lighted us till we
ascertained within these two or three hundred years that the earth
happens to light the moon as well! But I felt that, and so said
it:--now you have declared what I should never have presumed to
hope--and I repeat to you that I, with all to be thankful for to God,
am most of all thankful for this the last of his providences ... which
is no doubt, the natural and inevitable feeling, could one always see
clearly. Your regard for me is _all_ success--let the rest come, or
not come. In my heart's thankfulness I would ... I am sure I would
promise anything that would gratify you ... but it would _not_ do
that, to agree, in words, to change my affections, put them elsewhere
&c. &c. That would be pure foolish talking, and quite foreign to the
practical results which you will attain in a better way from a higher
motive. I will cheerfully promise you, however, to be 'bound by no
words,' blind to no miracle; in sober earnest, it is not because I
renounced once for all oxen and the owning and having to do with them,
that I will obstinately turn away from any unicorn when such an
apparition blesses me ... but meantime I shall walk at peace on our
hills here nor go looking in all corners for the bright curved horn!
And as for you ... if I did not dare 'to dream