e.

And now, 'Luria', so long as the parts cohere and the whole is
discernible, all will be well yet. I shall not look at it, nor think
of it, for a week or two, and then see what I have forgotten. Domizia
is all wrong; I told you I knew that her special colour had faded,--it
was but a bright line, and the more distinctly deep that it was so
narrow. One of my half dozen words on my scrap of paper 'pro memoria'
was, under the 'Act V.' '_she loves_'--to which I could not bring it,
you see! Yet the play requires it still,--something may yet be
effected, though.... I meant that she should propose to go to Pisa
with him, and begin a new life. But there is no hurry--I suppose it is
no use publishing much before Easter--I will try and remember what my
whole character _did_ mean--it was, in two words, understood at the
time by 'panther's-beauty'--on which hint I ought to have spoken! But
the work grew cold, and you came between, and the sun put out the fire
on the hearth _nec vult panthera domari_!

For the 'Soul's Tragedy'--_that_ will surprise you, I think. There is
no trace of you there,--you have not put out the black face of
_it_--it is all sneering and _disillusion_--and shall not be printed
but burned if you say the word--now wait and see and then say! I will
bring the first of the two parts next Saturday.

And now, dearest, I am with you--and the other matters are forgotten
already. God bless you, I am ever your own R. You will write to me I
trust? And tell me how to bear the cold.

_E.B.B. to R.B._

[Post-mark, February 12, 1846.]

Ah, the 'sortes'! Is it a double oracle--'swan and shadow'--do you
think? or do my eyes see double, dazzled by the light of it? 'I shall
love thee to eternity'--I _shall_.

And as for the wine, I did not indeed misunderstand you 'as my wont
is,' because I understood simply that 'habitually' you abstained from
wine, and I meant exactly that perhaps it would be better for your
health to take it habitually. It _might_, you know--not that I pretend
to advise. Only when you look so much too pale sometimes, it comes
into one's thoughts that you ought not to live on cresses and cold
water. Strong coffee, which is the nearest to a stimulant that I dare
to take, as far as ordinary diet goes, will almost always deliver _me_
from the worst of headaches, but there is no likeness, no comparison.
And your 'quite well' means that dreadful 'turning' still ... still!