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t time did I understand how selfish had been my adoration of my wife,--how I had merely purchased her of her scheming and avaricious mother,--how I had wronged her and one who loved her,--how incompatible with her youth and brilliancy were my maturity and unpoetic nature. Her conduct since our marriage was now fully explained. My love for her was immeasurably increased, but I loathed myself. I had but one thought, how reparation could best be made. I swear before Heaven, that could it have been possible without staining her name, I would have torn her from my heart, and given her to the one who rightfully claimed her from me. This was impossible. Only by guilt or vulgar disgrace could she become his. Then the question took possession of me, 'How shall I win her love?--how shall I win her love?' This repeated itself again and again, with a distinct and fearful iteration, as if a demon were whispering it in my ear. A thousand mad thoughts took possession of me, and suicide thrust itself on me. For a few moments,--though it seemed an age of experience,--I was insane. The blow had dispossessed my reason. Dimly, as in a drunken man, however, still remained the ordinary instincts, and that perception, which, like the muscles of respiration, keeps ever at work, let the mind be filled as it may with thoughts and purposes that seem entirely to engross and absorb it. I crept silently from the conservatory, and passing out into the street, entered the house at the front. Dinner was soon served, as usual, and my wife took her seat, with her customary manner. I, too, was confident, exhibited no variation from mine. Her self-possession was the result of control, mine of mere numbness. The machinery of life was temporarily continuing its regular motion without any supervision. This benumbed condition continued through a large portion of a sleepless night. The unintermitted repetition of the query, 'How shall I win her love?' tortured me into an agony like that experienced in a nightmare dream. Slowly and gradually my reason began to work, and I methodically commenced to elaborate a system by which to acquire what was now the chief object of my life,--my wife's _love_. I arose in the morning determined to obtain this, even should every other pursuit be relinquished and every other desire sacrificed. My system was formed. Life thereafter was to be devoted to it. My first object was to create a change in her feelings toward my rival;-
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