ny
friends in the valley as in Yarmouth: and when I left it, before the
winter set in, for Geneva, and came back in the spring, their cordial
greetings had a homely sound to me, although they were not conveyed in
English words.

I worked early and late, patiently and hard. I wrote a Story, with a
purpose growing, not remotely, out of my experience, and sent it to
Traddles, and he arranged for its publication very advantageously for
me; and the tidings of my growing reputation began to reach me from
travellers whom I encountered by chance. After some rest and change, I
fell to work, in my old ardent way, on a new fancy, which took strong
possession of me. As I advanced in the execution of this task, I felt it
more and more, and roused my utmost energies to do it well. This was my
third work of fiction. It was not half written, when, in an interval of
rest, I thought of returning home.

For a long time, though studying and working patiently, I had accustomed
myself to robust exercise. My health, severely impaired when I left
England, was quite restored. I had seen much. I had been in many
countries, and I hope I had improved my store of knowledge.

I have now recalled all that I think it needful to recall here, of this
term of absence--with one reservation. I have made it, thus far, with
no purpose of suppressing any of my thoughts; for, as I have elsewhere
said, this narrative is my written memory. I have desired to keep the
most secret current of my mind apart, and to the last. I enter on it
now. I cannot so completely penetrate the mystery of my own heart, as
to know when I began to think that I might have set its earliest and
brightest hopes on Agnes. I cannot say at what stage of my grief
it first became associated with the reflection, that, in my wayward
boyhood, I had thrown away the treasure of her love. I believe I may
have heard some whisper of that distant thought, in the old unhappy loss
or want of something never to be realized, of which I had been sensible.
But the thought came into my mind as a new reproach and new regret, when
I was left so sad and lonely in the world.

If, at that time, I had been much with her, I should, in the weakness of
my desolation, have betrayed this. It was what I remotely dreaded when I
was first impelled to stay away from England. I could not have borne
to lose the smallest portion of her sisterly affection; yet, in that
betrayal, I should have set a constraint between us hi