you must be pleased, ... as it was ‘the weight of too much liberty’ which offended you:  and now you believe, perhaps, that I trust you, love you, and look to you over the heads of the whole living world, without any one head needing to stoop; you must, if you please, because you belong to me now and shall believe as I choose.  There’s a ukase for you!  Cry out ... repent ... and I will loose the links, and let you go again—­shall it be ‘My dear Miss Barrett?’

Seriously, you shall not think of me such things as you half said, if not whole said, to-day.  If all men were to speak evil of you, my heart would speak of you the more good—­that would be the one result with me.  Do I not know you, soul to soul? should I believe that any of them could know you as I know you?  Then for the rest, I am not afraid of ‘toads’ now, not being a child any longer.  I am not inclined to mind, if you do not mind, what may be said about us by the benevolent world, nor will other reasons of a graver kind affect me otherwise than by the necessary pain.  Therefore the whole rests with you—­unless illness should intervene—­and you will be kind and good (will you not?) and not think hard thoughts of me ever again—­no.  It wasn’t the sense of being less than you had a right to pretend to, which made me speak what you disliked—­for it is I who am ‘unworthy,’ and not another—­not certainly that other!

I meant to write more to-night of subjects farther off us, but my sisters have come up-stairs and I must close my letter quickly.  Beloved, take care of your head!  Ah, do not write poems, nor read, nor neglect the walking, nor take that shower-bath. Will you, instead, try the warm bathing?  Surely the experiment is worth making for a little while.  Dearest beloved, do it for your own

BA.

R.B. to E.B.B.

Friday Morning.
[Post-mark, March 6, 1846.]

I am altogether your own, dearest—­the words were only words and the playful feelings were play—­while the fact has always been so irresistibly obvious as to make them break on and off it, fantastically like water turning to spray and spurts of foam on a great solid rock. Now you call the rock, a rock, but you must have known what chance you had of pushing it down when you sent all those light fancies and free-leaves, and refusals-to-hold-responsible, to do what they could.  It is a rock; and may be quite barren of good to you,—­not large enough to build houses on, not small enough to make a mantelpiece of, much less a pedestal for a statue, but it is real rock, that is all.

It is always I who ‘torment’ you—­instead of taking the present and blessing you, and leaving the future to its own cares.  I certainly am not apt to look curiously into what next week is to bring, much less next month or six months, but you, the having you, my own, dearest beloved, that is as different in kind as in degree from any other happiness or semblance of it that even seemed possible of realization.  Then, now, the health is all to stay, or retard us—­oh, be well, my Ba!