[18-19 December 1845]. Browning, Elizabeth Barrett to Browning, Robert.

              Thursday evening. 

Dearest you know how to say what makes me happiest, you who never think, you say, of making me happy! For my part I do not think of it either- I simply understand that you are my happiness, & that therefore you could not make another happiness for me, such as would be worth having-not even you! Why, how could you?- That was in my mind to speak yesterday, but I could not speak it-to write it, is easier.

Talking of happiness, .. shall I tell you? Promise not to be angry & I will tell you. I have thought sometimes that, if I considered myself wholly, I should choose to die this winter .. now .. before I had disappointed you in anything. But because you are better & dearer & more to be considered than I, I do not choose it. I cannot choose to give you any pain, even on the chance of its being a less pain, a less evil, than what may follow perhaps, (who can say?) if I should prove the burden of your life.

For if you make me happy with some words, you frighten me with others .. as with the extravagance yesterday!-& seriously, .. too seriously, when the moment for smiling at them is past, .. I am frightened .. I tremble! When you come to know me as well as I know myself, what can save me, do you think, from