chase her a birthday present of jewellery.
Mine, naturally, was the least expensive; it was an opal ring--the opal
was my favourite stone, because it seems to blush and turn pale as if it
had a soul. I told Bertha so when I gave it her, and said that it was an
emblem of the poetic nature, changing with the changing light of heaven
and of woman's eyes. In the evening she appeared elegantly dressed, and
wearing conspicuously all the birthday presents except mine. I looked
eagerly at her fingers, but saw no opal. I had no opportunity of
noticing this to her during the evening; but the next day, when I found
her seated near the window alone, after breakfast, I said, "You scorn to
wear my poor opal. I should have remembered that you despised poetic
natures, and should have given you coral, or turquoise, or some other
opaque unresponsive stone." "Do I despise it?" she answered, taking hold
of a delicate gold chain which she always wore round her neck and drawing
out the end from her bosom with my ring hanging to it; "it hurts me a
little, I can tell you," she said, with her usual dubious smile, "to wear
it in that secret place; and since your poetical nature is so stupid as
to prefer a more public position, I shall not endure the pain any
longer."

She took off the ring from the chain and put it on her finger, smiling
still, while the blood rushed to my cheeks, and I could not trust myself
to say a word of entreaty that she would keep the ring where it was
before.

I was completely fooled by this, and for two days shut myself up in my
own room whenever Bertha was absent, that I might intoxicate myself
afresh with the thought of this scene and all it implied.

I should mention that during these two months--which seemed a long life
to me from the novelty and intensity of the pleasures and pains I
underwent--my diseased anticipation in other people's consciousness
continued to torment me; now it was my father, and now my brother, now
Mrs. Filmore or her husband, and now our German courier, whose stream of
thought rushed upon me like a ringing in the ears not to be got rid of,
though it allowed my own impulses and ideas to continue their
uninterrupted course. It was like a preternaturally heightened sense of
hearing, making audible to one a roar of sound where others find perfect
stillness. The weariness and disgust of this involuntary intrusion into
other souls was counteracted only by my ignorance of Bertha, and my
g