nconceived, came rushing to my lips; the fire and glory of a
new manhood were kindling in me to the transformation of my
nature--when, in the very moment of utterance, a sheer barrier of doom
descended between me and my joy; the fire was quenched, and my soul was
poured out within me.

To this fatal point my fancy always brought me and no further, that
coming thus to the threshold of the house of joy and hearing the bars
shoot into their sockets I might thoroughly know my ineffectual self and
leave untouched the forbidden latch. So far I came in my dream times
without number; and always on the verge of joy there came that doom, and
the shooting of those adamantine bolts.

Yet all the while I wove it, I knew that this texture of dreams must
soon be drawn aside, and like the curtain in the tragedy reveal at last
the horror concealed within. Such brooding was but the deception of a
reluctant spirit dallying and delaying with any trifle by the way to put
off the arrival at the hill of evil prospect. At last I learned the
lesson of this abrupt ending to the dream at the point of full
disillusion; it forced itself upon me with the power of an oracular
utterance warning me to cease my palterings with fate. My reason now
rebuked me like a stern judge, dissecting all false pleas and laying
bare their weakness. What right had I, now knowing myself incurable,
even to dream of easing my own pain by darkening and despoiling a second
life? The love of solitude was now more to me than even the love of a
wife; it would surely come between us like a strange woman, and fill a
pure heart with bitterness. No smiling hopes of a possible redemption
could annul the immutable decree, and if I disobeyed the warning, guilt
as well as misery would be mine; for he is pitiful indeed who only weds
that his wife may suck the poison from his wounds. If I married I should
stand for ever condemned of an unutterable meanness. So I dispelled my
dreams and looked reality in the face.

It was a dismal prospect that lay before me. Until then the future had
held its possible secrets, its imaginable revelations of change, which,
like the luminous suggestions in dark clouds, allured with a promise of
a brief and penetrable gloom. In my darkest hours I had lulled fear by
the thought of a haply interposing Providence, and drifted on from day
to aimless day nursing the hope of some miraculous release upon the very
steps of the scaffold. But now I was twice falle