never told her. I would trace her footsteps where she
had taken her daily walk; I would wait beneath her window at night, to
see but her shadow upon the blind, until she put out her lamp, and left
the stars and myself the only watchers there--but I never told her. I
would lay flowers in her way, happy if she wore them on her bosom, or
wreathed them in her hair, as she sometimes would--but she never knew
from whom they came. I sickened at my heart for her; I pined, oh! how I
pined for her, and worshipped her as a saint, the hope, the glory, the
heaven of my life--but I never told her.

Did she love me? No. And, while I loved, I feared her. She never made me
her companion, never took my arm; would always sit opposite me in the
carriage instead of by my side; if in a game of forfeits, I forced the
embrace I had won, she would struggle with tears of anger, though she
had given her cheek to William with a blush but a few minutes before. If
I had not been her abject slave, I could have torn her in pieces. Alas!
alas! we were but boys, and she a girl still. How many, long years I
have suffered since then!

One night I could not sleep, but sat up in my room thinking. Why should
she not love me? I am esteemed well-looking and intelligent, thought I,
looking into the glass, as if to confirm my satisfactory judgment of
myself. I gazed long and earnestly. Yes, certainly handsome, said I with
my lips, but--fool! fool! said my mocking eyes; for at that moment there
came out of their depths--there came a devil! Yes, a devil that glared
at me from the glass! a devil that was, and yet was not, myself! a devil
that had my form, and looked out of my face, but with its own cruel,
mocking eyes! And he and I confronted each other in that horrible glass.
I know not how long, but they told me afterward that I was found next
morning making ghastly faces at myself.

And then I was carried by spirits into a land of visions, where for a
hundred years, or for a moment of time, I was flying through space, and
clouds, and fire!--groping through dark caverns, millions of miles
long, crying wildly for light and air; now a giant, entangled in myriads
of chains that I could not break; now a reptile, writhing away from
footsteps that made the earth reel and tremble beneath their tread; and
at last waking, as if out of sleep, a poor, puny thing, with limbs like
shadows, laughing or crying by turns for very feebleness.

* * * *