ever-save in the exciting stages of some brisk
flirtation. She will live hereafter by feeding other hearts with love's
lore she has learned from me, and then, Pygmalion-like, grow fond of the
images she has herself endowed with semblance of divinity, until they
seem to breathe back the mystery the soul can truly catch from only one.

"How anxious she will be lest the coroner shall have discovered any of
her notes in my pocket!

"I felt chilly as this last reflection crossed my mind, partly at
thought of the coroner, partly at the idea of Mary being unwillingly
compelled to wear mourning for me, in case of such a disclosure of our
engagement. It is a provoking thing for a girl of nineteen to have to go
into mourning for a deceased lover at the beginning of her second winter
in the metropolis.

"The water, though, with my motionless position, must have had something
to do with my chilliness. I see, sir, you think that I tell my story
with great levity; but indeed, indeed I should grow delirious did I
venture to hold steadily to the awfulness of my feelings the greater
part of that night. I think, indeed, I must have been most of the time
hysterical with horror, for the vibrating emotions I have recapitulated
did pass through my brain even as I have detailed them.

"But as I now became calm in thought, I summoned up again some
resolution of action.

"I will begin at that corner (said I), and swim around the whole
inclosure. I will swim slowly and again feel the sides of the tank with
my feet. If die I must, let me perish at least from well-directed though
exhausting effort, not sink from mere bootless weariness in sustaining
myself till the morning shall bring relief.

"The sides of the place seemed to grow higher as I now kept my watery
course beneath them. It was not altogether a dead pull. I had some
variety of emotion in making my circuit. When I swam in the shadow, it
looked to me more cheerful beyond in the moonlight. When I swam in the
moonlight, I had the hope of making some discovery when I should again
reach the shadow. I turned several times on my back to rest just where
those wavy lines would meet. The stars looked viciously bright to me
from the bottom of that well; there was such a company of them; they
were so glad in their lustrous revelry; and they had such space to move
in! I was alone, sad to despair, in a strange element, prisoned, and a
solitary gazer upon their mocking chorus. And yet there was