February 9

February 9, 1846 is all love and romance with Browning. He picks up Miss Barrett's reference to herself as more of a lotus-eater than a opium-eater:

"Now I kiss you, and will begin a new thinking of you—and end, and begin, going round and round in my circle of discovery,—My lotos-blossom! because they loved the lotos, were lotos-lovers,—λωτου τ' ερωτες, as Euripides writes in the Τρωαδες. "

But he does make an unnoticed faux pas which will leave an opening for a tweak from Miss Barrett:

"I am quite well now—my other note will have told you when the change began—I think I took too violent a shower bath, with a notion of getting better in as little time as possible,—and the stimulus turned mere feverishness to headache. However, it was no sooner gone, in a degree, than a worse plague came. I sate thinking of you—but I knew my note would arrive at about four o'clock or a little later—and I thought the visit for the quarter of an hour would as effectually prevent to-morrow's meeting as if the whole two hours' blessing had been laid to heart—to-morrow I shall see you, Ba—my sweetest."

If you think she won't notice that you don't know Miss Barrett.

I can hardly wait for Miss Barrett's response to that!