On August 25th came a great outpouring of feeling from Miss Barrett.  She took her friend so far into her confidence as to speak plainly of the household difficulties caused by her father’s autocratic temper.  The conversation was immediately followed by a letter in which she endeavoured to soften or qualify the impression her words had given, and her heart, now astir and craving sympathy, led her on to write of her most sorrowful and sacred memories—­those connected with her brother’s death.  Browning was deeply moved, most grateful for her trust in him, but she had forbidden him to notice the record of her grief.  He longed to return confidence with confidence, to tell what was urgent in his heart.  But the bar of three months since had not been removed, and he hesitated to speak.  His two days’ silence was unintelligible to his friend and caused her inexpressible anxiety.  Could any words of hers have displeased him?  Or was he seriously unwell?  She wrote on August 30th a little letter asking “the alms of just one line” to relieve her fears.  When snow-wreaths are loosened, a breath will bring down the avalanche.  It was impossible to receive this appeal and not to declare briefly, decisively, his unqualified trust in her, his entire devotion, his assured knowledge of what would constitute his supreme happiness.

Miss Barrett’s reply is perfect in its disinterested safe-guarding of his freedom and his future good as she conceived it.  She is deeply grateful, but she cannot allow him to empty his water-gourds into the sand.  What could she give that it would not be ungenerous to give?  Yet his part has not been altogether the harder of the two.  The subject must be left.  Such subjects, however, could not be left until the facts were ascertained.  Browning would not urge her a step beyond her actual feelings, but he must know whether her refusal was based solely on her view of his supposed interests.  And with the true delicacy of frankness she admits that even the sense of her own unworthiness is not the insuperable obstacle.  No—­but is she not a confirmed invalid?  She thought that she had done living when he came and sought her out.  If he would be wise, all these thoughts of her must be abandoned.  Such an answer brought a great calm to Browning’s heart; he did not desire to press her further; let things rest; it is for her to judge; if what she regards as an obstacle should be removed, she will certainly then act in his best interests; to himself this matter of health creates no difficulty; to sit by her for an hour a day, to write out what was in him for the world, and so to save his soul, would be to attain his ideal in life.  What woman would not be moved to the inmost depths by such words?  She insists that his noble extravagances must in no wise bind him; but all the bitternesses of life have been taken away from her; henceforth she is his for everything except to do him harm; the future rests with God and with him.  And amid the letters containing these grave sentences, so full of fate, first appears a reference to the pet name of her childhood—­the “Ba” which is all that here serves, like Swift’s “little language,” to indulge a foolish tenderness; and the translator of Prometheus is able to put Greek characters to their most delightful use in her “[Greek:  o philtate].”