step
soft, and not speak a word?"

"I promise."

"This way then, Sir--and mind you don't forget to step soft."

A strange coldness and stillness, an icy insensibility, a
dream-sensation of being impelled by some hidden, irresistible agency,
possessed me, as I followed him upstairs. He showed me softly into an
empty room; pointed to one of the walls, whispering, "It's only boards
papered over--" and then waited, keeping his eyes anxiously and steadily
fixed upon all my movements.

I listened; and through the thin partition, I heard voices--_her_ voice,
and _his_ voice. _I heard and I knew_--knew my degradation in all its
infamy, knew my wrongs in all their nameless horror. He was exulting
in the patience and secrecy which had brought success to the foul plot,
foully hidden for months on months; foully hidden until the very day
before I was to have claimed as my wife, a wretch as guilty as himself!

I could neither move nor breathe. The blood surged and heaved upward to
my brain; my heart strained and writhed in anguish; the life within me
raged and tore to get free. Whole years of the direst mental and bodily
agony were concentrated in that one moment of helpless, motionless
torment. I never lost the consciousness of suffering. I heard the
waiter say, under his breath, "My God! he's dying." I felt him loosen my
cravat--I knew that he dashed cold water over me; dragged me out of the
room; and, opening a window on the landing, held me firmly where the
night-air blew upon my face. I knew all this; and knew when the paroxysm
passed, and nothing remained of it, but a shivering helplessness in
every limb.

Erelong, the power of thinking began to return to me by degrees.

Misery, and shame, and horror, and a vain yearning to hide myself from
all human eyes, and weep out my life in secret, overcame me. Then, these
subsided; and ONE THOUGHT slowly arose in their stead--arose, and
cast down before it every obstacle of conscience, every principle of
education, every care for the future, every remembrance of the past,
every weakening influence of present misery, every repressing tie of
family and home, every anxiety for good fame in this life, and every
idea of the next that was to come. Before the fell poison of that
Thought, all other thoughts--good or evil--died. As it spoke secretly
within me, I felt my bodily strength coming back; a quick vigour leapt
hotly through my frame. I turned, and looked round towards the room w