e church, she would surely
want to visit the crypt. Should she do so, and there notice the
glass-covered tomb--as she could not help doing--the Lord only knew what
would happen. She had already Second-Sighted a woman being married to
me, and before I myself knew that I had such a hope. What might she not
reveal did she know where the woman came from? It may have been that her
power of Second Sight had to rest on some basis of knowledge or belief,
and that her vision was but some intuitive perception of my own
subjective thought. But whatever it was it should be stopped--at all
hazards.

This whole episode set me thinking introspectively, and led me gradually
but imperatively to self-analysis--not of powers, but of motives. I
found myself before long examining myself as to what were my real
intentions. I thought at first that this intellectual process was an
exercise of pure reason; but soon discarded this as inadequate--even
impossible. Reason is a cold manifestation; this feeling which swayed
and dominated me is none other than passion, which is quick, hot, and
insistent.

As for myself, the self-analysis could lead to but one result--the
expression to myself of the reality and definiteness of an already-formed
though unconscious intention. I wished to do the woman good--to serve
her in some way--to secure her some benefit by any means, no matter how
difficult, which might be within my power. I knew that I loved
her--loved her most truly and fervently; there was no need for
self-analysis to tell me that. And, moreover, no self-analysis, or any
other mental process that I knew of, could help my one doubt: whether she
was an ordinary woman (or an extraordinary woman, for the matter of that)
in some sore and terrible straits; or else one who lay under some
dreadful condition, only partially alive, and not mistress of herself or
her acts. Whichever her condition might be, there was in my own feeling
a superfluity of affection for her. The self-analysis taught me one
thing, at any rate--that I had for her, to start with, an infinite pity
which had softened towards her my whole being, and had already mastered
merely selfish desire. Out of it I began to find excuses for her every
act. In the doing so I knew now, though perhaps I did not at the time
the process was going on, that my view in its true inwardness was of her
as a living woman--the woman I loved.

In the forming of our ideas there are different me