d, when I stretched my hand out cordially, such bloom and light
and bliss rose to your young, wistful features, I had much ado often to
avoid straining you then and there to my heart."

"Don't talk any more of those days, sir," I interrupted, furtively
dashing away some tears from my eyes; his language was torture to me; for
I knew what I must do--and do soon--and all these reminiscences, and
these revelations of his feelings only made my work more difficult.

"No, Jane," he returned: "what necessity is there to dwell on the Past,
when the Present is so much surer--the Future so much brighter?"

I shuddered to hear the infatuated assertion.

"You see now how the case stands--do you not?" he continued. "After a
youth and manhood passed half in unutterable misery and half in dreary
solitude, I have for the first time found what I can truly love--I have
found you. You are my sympathy--my better self--my good angel. I am
bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely:
a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you,
draws you to my centre and spring of life, wraps my existence about you,
and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.

"It was because I felt and knew this, that I resolved to marry you. To
tell me that I had already a wife is empty mockery: you know now that I
had but a hideous demon. I was wrong to attempt to deceive you; but I
feared a stubbornness that exists in your character. I feared early
instilled prejudice: I wanted to have you safe before hazarding
confidences. This was cowardly: I should have appealed to your nobleness
and magnanimity at first, as I do now--opened to you plainly my life of
agony--described to you my hunger and thirst after a higher and worthier
existence--shown to you, not my _resolution_ (that word is weak), but my
resistless _bent_ to love faithfully and well, where I am faithfully and
well loved in return. Then I should have asked you to accept my pledge
of fidelity and to give me yours. Jane--give it me now."

A pause.

"Why are you silent, Jane?"

I was experiencing an ordeal: a hand of fiery iron grasped my vitals.
Terrible moment: full of struggle, blackness, burning! Not a human being
that ever lived could wish to be loved better than I was loved; and him
who thus loved me I absolutely worshipped: and I must renounce love and
idol. One drear word comprised my intolerable duty--"Depart!"

"J