When she was gone, I took up Robert's letter again to keep my mind employed on the only subject in the world that has any interest for it now.
This fresh reading increased the doubts I had already felt relative to his having remained in America after writing to me.

My grief and forlornness have made a strange alteration in my former feelings about his coming back.

I seem to have lost all my prudence and self-denial, and to care so little about his poverty, and so much about himself, that the prospect of his return is really the only comforting thought I have now to support me.

I know this is weak in me, and that his coming back can l ead to no good result for either of us; but he is the only living being left me to love; and--I can't explain it--but I want to put my arms round his neck and tell him about Mary.
March 14th.

I locked up the end of the cravat in my writing-desk.