[23 October 1845]. Browning, Robert to Browning, Elizabeth Barrett.

              But I must answer you, and be forgiven, too, dearest- I was (to begin at the beginning) surely not “startled” .. only properly aware of the deep blessing I have been enjoying this while, and not disposed to take its continuance as pure matter of course, and so treat with indifference the first shadow of a threatening intimation from without, the first hint of a possible abstraction from the quarter to which so many hopes & fears of mine have gone of late: in this case, knowing you, I was sure that if any imaginable form of displeasure could touch you without reaching me, I should not hear of it too soon-so I spoke-so you have spoken-and so now you get “excused”? .. no .. wondered at, with all my faculty of wonder for the strange exalting way you will persist to think of me; now, once for all, I will not pass for what I make no least pretence to: I quite understand the grace of your imaginary self-denial, and fidelity to a given word, and noble constancy,-but it all happens to be none of mine, none in the least. I love you because I love you,-I see you “once a week” because I cannot see you all day long,-I think of you all day long, because I most certainly could not think of you once an hour less, if I tried, or went to Pisa, or “abroad” (in every sense) in order to “be happy” .. a kind of adventure which you seem to suppose you have in some way interfered with: do, for this once, think, and never after, on the impossibility of your ever .. (you know I must talk your own language, so I shall say …) hindering any scheme of mine,