his wife, and her unloved life is misery. She is forced to live
in the frightful seclusion of this accursed island, and she is dying for
want of companionship. She feels that I understand and appreciate her,
that I could love her as she deserves, that I could render her happy. I
feel that I have met the only woman who has power to touch my heart, to
hold me back from the ruin into which I am about to plunge, to make
me useful to my fellows--a man, and not a drunkard." Whispering these
conclusions to myself, I am urged to brave public opinion, and make two
lives happy. I say to myself, or rather my desires say to me--"What
sin is there in this? Adultery? No; for a marriage without love is
the coarsest of all adulteries. What tie binds a man and woman
together--that formula of license pronounced by the priest, which the
law has recognized as a 'legal bond'? Surely not this only, for
marriage is but a partnership--a contract of mutual fidelity--and in
all contracts the violation of the terms of the agreement by one of the
contracting persons absolves the other. Mrs. Frere is then absolved, by
her husband's act. I cannot but think so. But is she willing to risk the
shame of divorce or legal offence? Perhaps. Is she fitted by temperament
to bear such a burden of contumely as must needs fall upon her? Will
she not feel disgust at the man who entrapped her into shame? Do not the
comforts which surround her compensate for the lack of affections?" And
so the torturing catechism continues, until I am driven mad with doubt,
love, and despair.

Of course I am wrong; of course I outrage my character as a priest; of
course I endanger--according to the creed I teach--my soul and hers. But
priests, unluckily, have hearts and passions as well as other men. Thank
God, as yet, I have never expressed my madness in words. What a fate is
mine! When I am in her presence I am in torment; when I am absent from
her my imagination pictures her surrounded by a thousand graces that are
not hers, but belong to all the women of my dreams--to Helen, to Juliet,
to Rosalind. Fools that we are of our own senses! When I think of her I
blush; when I hear her name my heart leaps, and I grow pale. Love! What
is the love of two pure souls, scarce conscious of the Paradise into
which they have fallen, to this maddening delirium? I can understand the
poison of Circe's cup; it is the sweet-torment of a forbidden love like
mine! Away gross materialism, in which I