s if one could
escape the mockery of hell in one's own breast! When I realized this,
I turned back. I should have been glad to have surrendered myself to
you--unconditionally--that very night. But you had already ridden away,
and the others had chosen to leave the house and hurry off by the night
train. Thus I am left here undisturbed, to come to my senses, and to
write you a long letter--to which I can expect no answer.

"After all, what could you say to me? For we are parted again--we are
separated, after all. And the case is so terribly clear, that it makes
all explanation and discussion superfluous. Why, then, should I waste
so much paper? and even go out of my way to give an explanation at
which one scarcely knows whether he ought to laugh or weep?

"But I owe it to you--no, not to you; for, at bottom, I did not sin
against you but against myself; and my confession, about which you will
perhaps care little, is merely a relief to that self, which I hope you
will grant me for the sake of our old friendship. I will try to be as
brief as possible.

"You know how, just before my father died, I was sent to a
watering-place; and how I twice passed through the city where you
lived--the first time on my journey there, by way of Holland, where I
had business to attend to; and then again on my return, when I was
spurred on to the wildest haste by the news from home, and wanted to
spare us both a mere shake of the hand between the steamer and the
railroad, while in such a mood. In the interval between these two
visits, you had married and become a father. I looked forward to
becoming acquainted with your wife and child, but for that very reason
I put off our meeting until a brighter time, and passed through Hamburg
without suspecting----

"Still, in spite of all my anxiety as to how I should find my father, a
painful recollection followed me. You know I had never been very
straitlaced in my way of life or my adventures, and scarcely ever had
paid for this frivolity even with remorse. I was always conscientious
toward the conscientious, and unscrupulous toward the unscrupulous. I
had never consciously or deliberately tried to disturb the peace of a
single soul, and was above the level of the conventional _bonnes
fortunes_ one meets in his every-day path.

"But, not to make myself out better than I was, certain temptations
were always powerful with me simply because of their adventurousness;
and a decidedly insignificant J