trust myself in your society.
Dearly, alas! have I paid for it. My only chance of victory over myself
was flight from you, after I had given the irrevocable sentence; by not
doing so, the poison has found its way to my heart. I feel that I love
you; that I cannot have you; and that death very shortly must terminate
my intolerable sufferings."

This affecting address pierced me to the soul; and now the consequences
of my guilt and duplicity rushed upon me like a torrent through a
bursting flood gate. I would have resigned Emily--I would have fled
with Eugenia to some distant country, and buried our sorrows in each
other's bosoms; and, in a state of irrepressible emotion, I proposed
this step to her.

"What do I hear, my beloved?" said she, starting up with horror from the
couch on which she was sitting with her face between her knees; "what!
is it you that would resign home, friends, character, the possession of
a virtuous woman, all for the polluted smiles of an--"

"Hold! hold! my Eugenia," said I; "do not, I beseech you, shock my ears
with an epithet which you do not deserve! Mine, mine, is all the guilt;
forget me, and you will still be happy."

She looked at me, then at her sweet boy, who was playing on the carpet--
but she made no answer; and then a flood of tears succeeded.

It was, indeed, a case of singular calamity for a beautiful young
creature to be placed in. She was only in her three-and-twentieth
year--and lovely as she was, nature had scarcely had time to finish the
picture. The regrets which subdued my mind on that fatal morning may
only be conceived by those who, like me, have led a licentious life--
have, for a time, buried all moral and religious feeling, and have been
suddenly called to a full sense of their guilt, and the misery they have
entailed on the innocent. I sat down and groaned. I cannot say I wept,
for I could not weep; but my forehead burned, and my heart was full of
bitterness.

While I thus meditated, Eugenia sat with her hand on her forehead in a
musing attitude. Had she been reverting to her former studies and
thrown herself into the finest conceivable posture of the tragic muse,
her appearance would not have been half so beautiful and affecting. I
thought she was praying, and I think so still. The tears ran in silence
down her face; I kissed them off, and almost forgot Emily.

"I am better, now, Frank," said the poor, sorrowful woman; "do not come
again until after