So bless you my own Ba!  I would not wait for paper, and you must forgive half-sheets, instead of a whole celestial quire to my love and praise.  Are you so well?  So adventurous?  Thank you from my heart of hearts.  And I am quite well to-day (and have received a note from Procter just this minute putting off his dinner on account of the death of his wife’s sister’s husband abroad).  Observe this sheet I take as I find—­I mean, that the tear tells of no improper speech repented of—­what English, what sense, what a soul’s tragedy! but then, what real, realest love and more than love for my ever dearest Ba possesses her own—­

E.B.B. to R.B.

[Post-mark, March 12, 1846.]

When my Orpheus writes ‘[Greek:  Peri lithon]’ he makes a great mistake about onyxes—­there is more true onyx in this letter of his that I have just read, than he will ever find in the desert land he goes to.  And for what ‘glitters on the ground,’ it reminds me of the yellow metal sparks found in the Malvern Hills, and how we used to laugh years ago at one of our geological acquaintances, who looked mole-hills up that mountain-range in the scorn of his eyes, saying ...  ‘Nothing but mica!!’ Is anybody to be rich through ‘mica’, I wonder? through ‘Nothing but mica?’ ‘As rich as—­as rich as’ ... Walter the Pennyless?

Dearest, best you are nevertheless, and it is a sorry jest which I can break upon your poverty, with that golden heart of yours so apprehended of mine!  Why if I am ’ambitious’—­is it not because you love me as if I were worthier of your love, and that, so, I get frightened of the opening of your eyelids to the unworthiness?  ’A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep’—­there, is my ‘ambition for afterward.’  Oh—­you do not understand how with an unspeakable wonder, an astonishment which keeps me from drawing breath, I look to this Dream, and ’see your face as the face of an angel,’ and fear for the vanishing, ... because dreams and angels do pass away in this world.  But you, I understand you, and all your goodness past expression, past belief of mine, if I had not known you ... just you.  If it will satisfy you that I should know you, love you, love you—­why then indeed—­because I never bowed down to any of the false gods I know the gold from the mica, ...  I!  ’My own beloved’—­you should have my soul to stand on if it could make you stand higher.  Yet you shall not call me ‘ambitious.’

To-day I went down-stairs again, and wished to know whether you were walking in your proportion—­and your letter does call you ‘better,’ whether you walked enough or not, and it bears the Deptford post-mark.  On Saturday I shall see how you are looking.  So pale you were last time!  I know Mr. Kenyon must have observed it, (dear Mr. Kenyon ... for being ‘kinder and kindest’) and that one of the ‘augurs’ marvelled at