Dear Bosie, After long and fruitless waiting I have determined to write to you myself, as much for your sake as for mine, as I would not like to think that I had passed through two long years of imprisonment without ever having received a single line from you.
I have no doubt that in this letter there will be much that will wound your vanity to the quick. If it proves so, read the letter over and over again till it kills your vanity.
If there be in it one single passage that brings tears to your eyes, weep as we weep in prison where the day no less than the night is set apart for tears. It is the only thing that can save you.