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Vienna, Sunday, at night
July 5, 1885
My sweet darling
I have never written to you from this place before. I am sitting at Fleischl's desk while he is asleep next door and I don't know how long I shall be able to write. I am writing to you because I so deeply regret the angry words I wrote to you this afternoon. I don't know how you will take what I said, and that's why I am adding this. I am so terribly sorry if I said something which sounded unloving, and especially from this distance. When we are together a serious or severe word can be followed at once by a tender reconciliation, and the little storm only testifies to the soundness of the structure. But when we are so far apart each word has time to engrave itself on one's memory, and there is no friendly hand to smooth it out. I don't know what to do. I just couldn't accept what you wanted to do without making serious objections, and yet-I realize how one can offend by love the person one loves most-and yet I am now, afterwards, inclined to let anything happen rather than have brought you to the verge of tears.
I do hope you won't take it too much to heart. You are so good, and sweet, and full of compassion and kind interpretations, you surely won't consider the influence I am trying to exert upon you as the result of an unloving and unjust disposition. Do you remember how once, after we had parted in anger, I soon came back to you, and you said you would never forget? In the same way I am not ashamed to come back to you now and ask once more for a kind word, a friendly glance. You are my precious little woman and even if you make a mistake you are none the less so, but you must be able to take some criticism and return it if you feel like doing so. There was a time when you did me a gross injustice and caused me great suffering and I think you really had to hear about it often enough, but believe me, it affected me more deeply than anything else in my life. But if you are in my debt I am proud of it, and if my lov