the great house
on pretense of reconciling them.

"But the second part of the letter set me thinking. Here it is, in his
own words.

"'It is only by struggling against myself (and no language can say how
hard the struggle has been) that I have decided on writing, instead of
speaking to you. A merciless necessity claims my future life. I must
leave Thorpe Ambrose, I must leave England, without hesitating, without
stopping to look back. There are reasons--terrible reasons, which I have
madly trifled with--for my never letting Mr. Armadale set eyes on me, or
hear of me again, after what has happened between us. I must go, never
more to live under the same roof, never more to breathe the same air
with that man. I must hide myself from him under an assumed name; I
must put the mountains and the seas between us. I have been warned as
no human creature was ever warned before. I believe--I dare not tell you
why--I believe that, if the fascination you have for me draws me back to
you, fatal consequences will come of it to the man whose life has been
so strangely mingled with your life and mine--the man who was once
_your_ admirer and _my_ friend. And yet, feeling this, seeing it in my
mind as plainly as I see the sky above my head, there is a weakness in
me that still shrinks from the one imperative sacrifice of never seeing
you again. I am fighting with it as a man fights with the strength of
his despair. I have been near enough, not an hour since, to see the
house where you live, and have forced myself away again out of sight
of it. Can I force myself away further still, now that my letter is
written--now, when the useless confession escapes me, and I own to
loving you with the first love I have ever known, with the last love
I shall ever feel? Let the coming time answer the question; I dare not
write of it or think of it more."

"Those were the last words. In that strange way the letter ended.

"I felt a perfect fever of curiosity to know what he meant. His loving
me, of course, was easy enough to understand. But what did he mean by
saying he had been warned? Why was he never to live under the same roof,
never to breathe the same air again, with young Armadale? What sort of
quarrel could it be which obliged one man to hide himself from another
under an assumed name, and to put the mountains and the seas between
them? Above all, if he came back, and let me fascinate him, why should
it be fatal to the hateful lout who pos