BR TO OTTOLINE MORRELL, [30 JULY 1913]
BRACERS 17978. Morrell papers #839, Texas
Proofread by A.G. Bone et al.

Wed. mg.1^, 2

My Darling Darling

You are only just gone, yet already I feel I must write to you, while the joy of you is still with me. Yesterday and this morning were very very happy — I don’t know whether it was because of our talk the day before yesterday, but you made me feel something I had always missed before — the sense of a stable relation, not to be snapped suddenly, not at the mercy of moods. The passing of time and things lived through together ought to strengthen a tie that has any depth — but hitherto it has never seemed as if that was happening. So long as it doesn’t happen, restlessness and fever are unavoidable. But I feel now as if you had added up my account, and found that on the whole it comes out on the right side, and as if that made everything less precarious.

The real difficulty is that to do my work I must make my daily life as little tiring as possible, and that our relation can hardly help being very exhausting. But it will grow less so if I feel more sure of you. If ever a time comes again when you can give me daily companionship, as you did at Peppard and at Lausanne, it is very important to make the most of it — I am capable of things under those conditions that I can’t do away from you.

I cannot strike the balance when I go over the items in thinking whether we ought to part — but I feel it would be an act of cowardice to part — it would mean in the long run accepting the second best through fear of pain, which is what I feel Crompton has done with disastrous results.

Don’t imagine I shall be unhappy while I am away with Sanger. I feel a great peace as regards you, and it will leave me free to enjoy the beauty of Italy and the delight of living with nature.

Goodbye my Loved One. Do write as long letters as you can — whenever you have leisure, even if it is not just when I am arriving at an address — I love you Dearest with all the strength that is in me.

Your
B

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  [document] Document 000839. Proofread against a colour scan of the original.

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  [envelope] A circled “839”.