een me and not merely the living who stood closest,
but between me and the closer graves, ... and I reproach myself for
this sometimes, and, so, ask you not to blame me for a different
thing.

As to unfavourable influences, ... I can speak of them quietly, having
foreseen them from the first, ... and it is true, I have been thinking
since yesterday, that I might be prevented from receiving you here,
and _should_, if all were known: but with that act, the adverse power
would end. It is not my fault if I have to choose between two
affections; only my pain; and I have not to choose between two duties,
I feel, ... since I am yours, while I am of any worth to you at all.
For the plan of the sealed letter, it would correct no evil,--ah, you
do not see, you do not understand. The danger does not come from the
side to which a reason may go. Only one person holds the thunder--and
I shall be thundered at; I shall not be reasoned with--it is
impossible. I could tell you some dreary chronicles made for laughing
and crying over; and you know that if I once thought I might be loved
enough to be spared above others, I cannot think so now. In the
meanwhile we need not for the present be afraid. Let there be ever so
many suspectors, there will be no informers. I suspect the suspectors,
but the informers are out of the world, I am very sure:--and then, the
one person, by a curious anomaly, _never_ draws an inference of this
order, until the bare blade of it is thrust palpably into his hand,
point outwards. So it has been in other cases than ours--and so it is,
at this moment in the house, with others than ourselves.

I have your letter to stop me. If I had my whole life in my hands with
your letter, could I thank you for it, I wonder, at all worthily? I
cannot believe that I could. Yet in life and in death I shall be
grateful to you.--

But for the paper--no. Now, observe, that it would seem like a
prepared apology for something wrong. And besides--the apology would
be nothing but the offence in another form--unless you said it was all
a mistake--(_will_ you, again?)--that it was all a mistake and you
were only calling for your boots! Well, if you said _that_, it would
be worth writing, but anything less would be something worse than
nothing: and would not save me--which you were thinking of, I
know--would not save me the least of the stripes. For
'conditions'--now I will tell you what I said once in a jest....

'If a prince of Eldo