Dearest and best you were yesterday, to write me the little note!  You are better than the imaginations of my heart, and they, as far as they relate to you (not further) are not desperately wicked, I think.  I always expect the kindest things from you, and you always are doing some kindness beyond what is expected, and this is a miracle too, like the rest, now isn’t it?  When the knock came last night, I knew it was your letter, and not another’s.  Just another little leaf of my Koran!  How I thank you ... thank you!  If I write too kind letters, as you say, why they may be too kind for me to send, but not for you to receive; and I suppose I think more of you than of me, which accounts for my writing them, accounts and justifies.  And that is my reflection not now for the first time.  For we break rules very often—­as that exegetical third person might expound to you clearly out of the ninety-sixth volume of the ‘Code of Conventions,’ only you are not like another, nor have you been to me like another—­you began with most improvident and (will you let me say?) unmasculine generosity, and Queen Victoria does not sit upon a mat after the fashion of Queen Pomare, nor should.

But ... but ... you know very fully that you are breaking faith in the matter of the ‘Tragedy’ and ’Luria’—­you promised to rest—­and you rest for three days.  Is it so that people get well? or keep well?  Indeed I do not think I shall let you have ‘Luria.’  Ah—­be careful, I do beseech you—­be careful.  There is time for a pause, and the works will profit by it themselves.  And you!  And I ... if you are ill!—­

For the rest I will let you walk in my field, and see my elms as much as you please ... though I hear about the shower bath with a little suspicion.  Why, if it did you harm before, should it not again? and why should you use it, if it threatens harm?  Now tell me if it hasn’t made you rather unwell since the new trial!—­tell me, dear, dearest.

As for myself, I believe that you set about exhorting me to be busy, just that I might not reproach you for the over-business.  Confess that that was the only meaning of the exhortation.  But no, you are quite serious, you say.  You even threaten me in a sort of underground murmur, which sounds like a nascent earthquake; and if I do not write so much a day directly, your stipendiary magistrateship will take away my license to be loved ...  I am not to be Ba to you any longer ... you say!  And is this right? now I ask you.  Ever so many chrystals fell off by that stroke of the baton, I do assure you.  Only you did not mean quite what you said so too articulately, and you will unsay it, if you please, and unthink it near the elms.

As for the writing, I will write ...  I have written ...  I am writing.  You do not fancy that I have given up writing?—­No.  Only I have certainly been more loitering and distracted than usual in what I have done, which is not my fault—­nor yours directly—­and I feel an indisposition to setting about the romance, the hand of the soul shakes.  I am too happy and not calm enough, I suppose, to have the right inclination.  Well—­it will come.  But all in blots and fragments there are verses enough, to fill a volume done in the last year.