I had not the courage to enter my own dwelling! My heart sank

within me. It was as if the whole hope of a long life, an intense

desire, a keen unremitting pursuit, had suddenly been for ever

baffled. Let no one who has not been in my situation; who has not

been governed by like moral and social influences from the beginning;

who knows not my sensibilities, and the organization--singular and

strange it may be--of my mind and body; let no such person jump

to the conclusion that there was any thing unnatural, however

unreasonable and unreasoning, in the wild passion which possessed

me. I look back upon it with some surprise myself. The fears which

I felt, the sufferings I endured, however unreasonable, were yet

true to my training.

That training made me selfish; how selfish let

my blindness show! In the blindness of self I could see nothing but

the thing I feared, the one phantom--phantom though it were--which

was sufficient to quell and crush all the better part of man within

me, banish all the real blessings which were at command around

me. I gave but a single second glance through the windows of my

habitation, and then darted desperately away from the entrance! I

bounded, without a consciousness, through the now still and dreary

streets, and found myself, without intending it, once more beside the

river, whose constant melancholy chidings, seemed the echoes-though

in the faintest possible degree--of the deep waters of some

apprehensive sorrow then rolling through all the channels of my

soul.

What was it that I feared? What was it that I sought? Was it love?

Can it be that the strange passion which we call by this name, was

the source of that sad frenzy which filled and afflicted my heart?

And was I not successful in my love? Had I not found the sought?--won

the withheld? What was denied to me that I desired? I asked of

myself these questions. I asked them in vain. I could not answer

them. I believe that I can answer now. It was sincerity, earnestness,

devotion from her, all speaking through an intensity like that

which I felt within my own soul.

Now, Julia lacked this earnestness, this intensity. Accustomed

to submission, her manner was habitually subdued. Her strongest

utterance was a tear, and that was most frequently hidden. She did

not respond to me in the language in which my affections were wont

to speak. Sincerity she did not lack--far from it--she was truth

itself! It is the keener pang to my conscience now, that I am

compelled to admit this conviction. Her modes of utterance were

not less true than mine. They were not less significant of truth;

but they were after a different fashion. In a moment of calm and

reason, I might have believed this truth; nay, I knew it, even at

those moments when I was most unjust. It was not the truth that I

required so much as the presence of an attachment which could equal

mine in its degree and strength. This was not in her nature. She

was one taught to subdue her nature, to repress the tendencies of

her heart, to submit in silence and in meekness. She had invariably

done so until the insane urgency of her mother made her desperate.

But for this desperation she had still submitted, perhaps, had never

been my wife. In the fervent intensity of my own love, I fancied,

from the beginning, that there was something too temperate in the

tone of hers. Were I to be examined now, on this point, I should

say that her deportment was one which declared the nicest union

of sensibility and maidenly propriety. But, compared with mine,

her passions were feeble, frigid. Mine were equally intense and

exacting. Perhaps, had she even responded to my impetuosity with

a like fervor, I should have recoiled from her with a feeling of

disgust much more rapid and much more legitimate, than was that of

my present frenzy.




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