sence, I forget my existence; the past, the
future--all I feel is that she is there beside me and that I would
desire nothing more to all eternity, than that she should remain so. Do
you recollect how strange it once seemed to us, that the same
passionate poet, from whose brain proceeded 'Werther' should have
expressed such tame feelings as these--

"'Gaze at the moon,
Or think of thee,
I fancy 'tis the same.
All in a holy light, I see,
And know not how it came.'

"And now to my shame be it spoken, I experience the same feelings in
myself. This lunacy, as we jestingly called it, has taken such
possession of me, that my only desire at present is, that through all
the future years of my life, I might live as in one long night,
surrounded by the pale veiled halo which now calms my soul.

"This is but a dream. Ere long I must insist on my little patient's
departure to more civilised regions, where she will be better provided
for during her convalescence, than she can be here, where chicken-broth
is the landlady's sole culinary achievement. Then I shall become
unnecessary, and can bid farewell to the Dead Lake, and once more try
to live in a world which after these events will seem doubly desolate
to me. Was I not right in deploring the departure of the train? By this
time I should have reached my destination. But why should not the
journey be only postponed for a fortnight; especially as the one I had
intended to take does in no wise depend on the weather, or the company.
I can tell you the reason, Charles; I know that you will not despise me
for it. My courage is gone! Is it so very despicable that I now dread
that gloomy depth, into which a week ago I was willing to plunge; now
that I have found a place of rest up here in the daylight? And though
in a few days I shall be again roaming about, like the wandering
unsettled savage I was, up to this last week, yet nothing can ever
efface from my heart the feeling that somewhere between heaven and
earth there is a corner where I could live in repose; where, like that
Matricide, in Sophocles, I had found a sanctuary from which, awed by
the holiness of the refuge even the furies keep aloof, and dare not
sully the threshold.

"Unfortunately, it is perfectly clear to me that from her, I also must
keep aloof. This woman even if I ventured to offer her my unamiable
society for the remainder