e. How if it was I that did not please? How if this
unseen lover should turn from me with disaffection? And now I spent
hours before the glass, studying and judging my attractions, and was
never weary of changing my dress or ordering my hair.

When the day came I was long about my toilet; but at last, with a sort
of hopeful desperation, I had to own that I could do no more, and must
now stand or fall by nature. My occupation ended, I fell a prey to the
most sickening impatience, mingled with alarms; giving ear to the
swelling rumour of the streets, and at each change of sound or silence,
starting, shrinking, and colouring to the brow. Love is not to be
prepared, I know, without some knowledge of the object; and yet, when
the cab at last rattled to the door, and I heard my visitor mount the
stairs, such was the tumult of hopes in my poor bosom that love itself
might have been proud to own their parentage. The door opened, and it
was Dr. Grierson that appeared. I believe I must have screamed aloud,
and I know, at least, that I fell fainting to the floor.

When I came to myself he was standing over me, counting my pulse. "I
have startled you," he said. "A difficulty unforeseen--the impossibility
of obtaining a certain drug in its full purity--has forced me to resort
to London unprepared. I regret that I should have shown myself once more
without those poor attractions which are much, perhaps, to you, but to
me are no more considerable than rain that falls into the sea. Youth is
but a state, as passing as that syncope from which you are but just
awakened, and, if there be truth in science, as easy to recall; for I
find, Asenath, that I must now take you for my confidant. Since my first
years I have devoted every hour and act of life to one ambitious task;
and the time of my success is at hand. In these new countries, where I
was so long content to stay, I collected indispensable ingredients; I
have fortified myself on every side from the possibility of error; what
was a dream now takes the substance of reality; and when I offered you a
son of mine I did so in a figure. That son--that husband, Asenath, is
myself--not as you now behold me, but restored to the first energy of
youth. You think me mad? It is the customary attitude of ignorance. I
will not argue; I will leave facts to speak. When you behold me
purified, invigorated, renewed, restamped in the original image--when
you recognise in me (what I shall be) the first per