I think of all my dreams and aspirations, and of the path which I know lies before me if I can only bide my time, and it seems a sin and a shameful thing to allow my resolve to be turned; and then comes the mocking suspicion, is this fine abstract duty of yours anything but a subtlety of your own selfishness? Have you not other more imperative duties? You may fancy whether my life is a very happy one thus spent without even the satisfaction of the sense of right-doing. I must come to some resolution about it, and that shortly. I was talking seriously with Fanning the other night about the possibility of finding some employment of a profitable kind in Australia, storekeeping, squatting, or the like. As I told him, any change in my mode of life must be TOTAL. If I am to change at all, the change must be total and complete. I will not attempt my own profession. I should only be led astray to think and to work as of old, and sigh continually for my old dear and intoxicating pursuits. I wish I understood Brewing, and I would make a proposition to come and help your father. You may smile, but I am as serious as ever I was in my life. [The distance between them made it doubly difficult to keep in touch with one another, when the post took from four and a half to five or even six months to reach England from Australia. The answer to a letter would come when the matter in question was long done with. The assurance that he was doing right at one moment seemed inadequate when circumstances had altered and hope sunk lower. It was all too easy to suspect that she did not understand his aims, his thirst for action, nor the fact that he was no longer free to do as he liked, whether to stay in the navy, to go into practice, or follow his own pursuits and pleasure. Yet it made him despair to be so hedged in by circumstances. With all his efforts, he seemed as though he had done nothing but earn the reputation of being a very promising young man. How much easier to continue the struggle if he could but have seen her face to face, and read her thoughts as to whether he were right or wrong in the course he was pursuing. He appeals to her faith that he is choosing the nobler path in pursuing knowledge, than in turning aside to the temptation of throwing it up for the sake of their speedier union. Still she was right in claiming a share in his work; but for her his life would have been wasted.