in my power to recede.
After having solemnly avowed my resolution to be thus sincere in my
confession, any particle of reserve or duplicity would cost me my life.

This indeed was a subject to be deeply thought upon. Hitherto I had been
guilty of concealment with regard to my friend. I had entered into no
formal compact, but had been conscious to a kind of tacit obligation to
hide no important transaction of my life from him. This consciousness
was the source of continual anxiety. I had exerted, on numerous
occasions, my bivocal faculty, but, in my intercourse with Ludloe, had
suffered not the slightest intimation to escape me with regard to it.
This reserve was not easily explained. It was, in a great degree, the
product of habit; but I likewise considered that the efficacy of this
instrument depended upon its existence being unknown. To confide
the secret to one, was to put an end to my privilege: how widely the
knowledge would thenceforth be diffused, I had no power to foresee.

Each day multiplied the impediments to confidence. Shame hindered me
from acknowledging my past reserves. Ludloe, from the nature of our
intercourse, would certainly account my reserve, in this respect,
unjustifiable, and to excite his indignation or contempt was an
unpleasing undertaking. Now, if I should resolve to persist in my new
path, this reserve must be dismissed: I must make him master of a secret
which was precious to me beyond all others; by acquainting him with past
concealments, I must risk incurring his suspicion and his anger. These
reflections were productive of considerable embarrassment.

There was, indeed, an avenue by which to escape these difficulties, if
it did not, at the same time, plunge me into greater. My confessions
might, in other respects, be unbounded, but my reserves, in this
particular, might be continued. Yet should I not expose myself
to formidable perils? Would my secret be for ever unsuspected and
undiscovered?

When I considered the nature of this faculty, the impossibility of going
farther than suspicion, since the agent could be known only by his
own confession, and even this confession would not be believed by the
greater part of mankind, I was tempted to conceal it.

In most cases, if I had asserted the possession of this power, I should
be treated as a liar; it would be considered as an absurd and audacious
expedient to free myself from the suspicion of having entered into
compact with a daemon,