te mistaken. But I am not
surprised. Such mistakes are frequently made--a kind of auto-suggestion.'

'Mistaken!' I murmured.

I could not prevent the room running round me as I reclined on the sofa;
and I fainted.

But in the night, safely in my room again at the hotel, I wondered
whether that secret fear, now exorcised, had not also been a hope. I
wondered....

PART II

THREE HUMAN HEARTS

I

And now I was twenty-six.

Everyone who knows Jove knows the poignant and delicious day when the
lovers, undeclared, but sure of mutual passion, await the magic moment of
avowal, with all its changeful consequences. I resume my fragmentary
narrative at such a day in my life. As for me, I waited for the avowal as
for an earthquake. I felt as though I were the captain of a ship on fire,
and the only person aware that the flames were creeping towards a powder
magazine. And my love shone fiercely in my heart, like a southern star;
it held me, hypnotized, in a thrilling and exquisite entrancement, so
that if my secret, silent lover was away from me, as on that fatal night
in my drawing-room, my friends were but phantom presences in a shadowy
world. This is not an exaggerated figure, but the truth, for when I have
loved I have loved much....

My drawing-room in Bedford Court, that night on which the violent drama
of my life recommenced, indicated fairly the sorts of success which I
had achieved, and the direction of my tastes. The victim of Diaz had
gradually passed away, and a new creature had replaced her--a creature
rapidly developed, and somewhat brazened in the process under the sun of
an extraordinary double prosperity in London. I had soon learnt that my
face had a magic to win for me what wealth cannot buy. My books had given
me fame and money. And I could not prevent the world from worshipping the
woman whom it deemed the gods had greatly favoured. I could not have
prevented it, even had I wished, and I did not wish, I knew well that no
merit and no virtue, but merely the accident of facial curves, and the
accident of a convolution of the brain, had brought me this ascendancy,
and at first I reminded myself of the duty of humility. But when homage
is reiterated, when the pleasure of obeying a command and satisfying a
caprice is begged for, when roses are strewn, and even necks put down in
the path, one forgets to be humble; one forgets that in meekness alone
lies the sole good; one confuses deserts wit