[6-7 January 1846]. Browning, Robert to Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

              Tuesday Night. 

But, my sweet, there is safer going in letters than in visits, do you not see? In the letter, one may go to the utmost limit of one’s supposed tether without danger-there is the distance so palpably between the most audacious step there, and the next .. which is no where, seeing it is not in the letter: quite otherwise in personal intercourse, where any indication of turning to a certain path, even, might possibly be checked not for its own fault but lest, the path once reached and proceeded in, some other forbidden turning might come into sight, we will say: in the letter, all ended there, just there .. and you may think of that, and forgive,-at all events, may avoid speaking irrevocable words-and when, as to me, those words are intensely true, doom-words-think, dearest! Because, as I told you once, what most characterizes my feeling for you is the perfect respect in it, the full belief .. (I shall get presently to poor Robert’s very avowal of “owing you all esteem”!)- It is on that I build, and am secure-for how should I know, of myself, how to serve you and be properly yours if it all was to be learnt by my own interpreting, and what you professed to dislike you were to be considered as wishing for, and what liking, as it seemed, you were loathing at your heart, and if so