love.

And for that letter ... do you fancy that in _my_ memory the sting is
not gone from it?--and that I do not carry the thought of it, as the
Roman maidens, you speak of, their cool harmless snakes, at my heart
always? So let the poor letter be forgiven, for the sake of the dear
letter that was burnt, forgiven by _you_--until you grow angry with me
instead--just till then.

And that you should care so much about the opium! Then _I_ must care,
and get to do with less--at least. On the other side of your goodness
and indulgence (a very little way on the other side) it might strike
you as strange that I who have had no pain--no acute suffering to keep
down from its angles--should need opium in any shape. But I have had
restlessness till it made me almost mad: at one time I lost the power
of sleeping quite--and even in the day, the continual aching sense of
weakness has been intolerable--besides palpitation--as if one's life,
instead of giving movement to the body, were imprisoned undiminished
within it, and beating and fluttering impotently to get out, at all
the doors and windows. So the medical people gave me opium--a
preparation of it, called morphine, and ether--and ever since I have
been calling it my amreeta draught, my elixir,--because the
tranquillizing power has been wonderful. Such a nervous system I
have--so irritable naturally, and so shattered by various causes, that
the need has continued in a degree until now, and it would be
dangerous to leave off the calming remedy, Mr. Jago says, except very
slowly and gradually. But slowly and gradually something may be
done--and you are to understand that I never _increased_ upon the
prescribed quantity ... prescribed in the first instance--no! Now
think of my writing all this to you!--

And after all the lotus-eaters are blessed beyond the opium-eaters;
and the best of lotuses are such thoughts as I know.

Dear Miss Mitford comes to-morrow, and I am not glad enough. Shall I
have a letter to make me glad? She will talk, talk, talk ... and I
shall be hoping all day that not a word may be talked of ... _you_:--a
forlorn hope indeed! There's a hope for a day like Thursday which is
just in the middle between a Tuesday and a Saturday!

Your head ... is it ... _how_ is it? tell me. And consider again if it
could be possible that I could ever desire to reproach _you_ ... in
what I said about the letter.

May God bless you, best and dearest. If you are the _compensat