Ottilia resumed her place there, I became
infinitely peacefuller, and stronger to subdue my hungry nature. It
caused me no pang, strangely though it read in my sight when written, to
send warm greetings and respects to the prince her husband.

Is it any waste of time to write of love? The trials of life are in
it, but in a narrow ring and a fierier. You may learn to know yourself
through love, as you do after years of life, whether you are fit to lift
them that are about you, or whether you are but a cheat, and a load
on the backs of your fellows. The impure perishes, the inefficient
languishes, the moderate comes to its autumn of decay--these are of the
kinds which aim at satisfaction to die of it soon or late. The love that
survives has strangled craving; it lives because it lives to nourish and
succour like the heavens.

But to strangle craving is indeed to go through a death before you reach
your immortality.

But again, to write of a love perverted by all the elements contributing
to foolishness, and foredoomed to chastisement, would be a graceless
business. Janet and I went through our trial, she, you may believe, the
braver under the most to bear.

I was taken by Temple down to the ship--smelling East of London, for the
double purpose of trying to convince Captain Welsh of the extravagance
of a piece of chivalry he was about to commit, and of seeing a lady with
a history, who had recently come under his guardianship. Temple thought
I should know her, but he made a mystery of it until the moment of our
introduction arrived, not being certain of her identity, and not wishing
to have me disappointed. It appeared that Captain Welsh questioned his
men closely after he had won his case, and he arrived at the conclusion
that two or three of them had been guilty of false swearing in his
interests. He did not dismiss them, for, as he said, it was twice a bad
thing to turn sinners loose: it was to shove them out of the direct
road of amendment, and it was a wrong to the population. He insisted,
however, on paying the legal costs and an indemnity for the collision
at sea; and Temple was in great distress about it, he having originally
suggested the suspicion of his men to Captain Welsh. 'I wanted to put
him on his guard against those rascals,' Temple said, 'and I suppose,'
he sighed, 'I wanted the old captain to think me enormously clever all
round.' He shook himself, and assumed a bearish aspect, significant of
disgus