so as to be able to knock and give it. I shall
be with you to-morrow, God willing--being quite well.

Bless you ever--

_R.B. to E.B.B._

Thursday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 19, 1846.]

My sweetest, best, dearest Ba I _do_ love you less, much less already,
and adore you more, more by so much more as I see of you, think of
you--I am yours just as much as those flowers; and you may pluck those
flowers to pieces or put them in your breast; it is not because you so
bless me now that you may not if you please one day--you will stop me
here; but it is the truth and I live in it.

I am quite well; indeed, this morning, _noticeably_ well, they tell
me, and well I mean to keep if I can.

When I got home last evening I found this note--and I have _accepted_,
that I might say I could also keep an engagement, if so minded, at
Harley Street--thereby insinuating that other reasons _may_ bring me
into the neighbourhood than _the_ reason--but I shall either not go
there, or only for an hour at most. I also found a note headed
'Strictly private and confidential'--so here it goes from my mouth to
my heart--pleasantly proposing that I should start in a few days for
St. Petersburg, as secretary to somebody going there on a 'mission of
humanity'--_grazie tante_!

Did you hear of my meeting someone at the door whom I take to have
been one of your brothers?

One thing vexed me in your letter--I will tell you, the praise of
_my_ letters. Now, one merit they have--in language mystical--that of
having _no_ merit. If I caught myself trying to write finely,
graphically &c. &c., nay, if I found myself conscious of having in my
own opinion, so written, all would be over! yes, over! I should be
respecting you inordinately, paying a proper tribute to your genius,
summoning the necessary collectedness,--plenty of all that! But the
feeling with which I write to you, not knowing that it is
writing,--with _you_, face and mouth and hair and eyes opposite me,
touching me, knowing that all _is_ as I say, and helping out the
imperfect phrases from your own intuition--_that_ would be gone--and
_what_ in its place? 'Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we write to
Ambleside.' No, no, love, nor can it ever be so, nor should it ever be
so if--even if, preserving all that intimate relation, with the
carelessness, _still_, somehow, was obtained with