was in me which was
altogether beyond control; and crying out: 'why, my poor dear,' I found
myself in the act of rushing through the staggering boat to take her to
me.

Mid-way, however, I was saved: a whisper, intense as lightning, arrested
me: 'Forward is no escape, nor backward, but _sideward_ there may be a
way!' And at a sudden impulse, before I knew what I was doing, I was in
the water swimming.

The smaller of the islands was two hundred yards away, and thither I
swam, rested some minutes, and thence to the Castle. I did not once look
behind me.

* * * * *

Well, from 11 A.M. till five in the afternoon, I thought it all out,
lying in the damp flannels on my face on the sofa in the recess beside
my bed, where it was quite dark behind the tattered piece of arras: and
what things I suffered that day, and what deeps I sounded, and what
prayers I prayed, God knows. What infinitely complicated the awful
problem was this thought in my head: that to kill her would be far more
merciful to her than to leave her alone, having killed myself: and,
Heaven knows, it was for her alone that I thought, not at all caring for
myself. To kill her was better: but to kill her with my own hands--that
was too hard to expect of a poor devil like me, a poor common son of
Adam, after all, and never any sublime self-immolator, as two or three
of them were. And hours I lay there with brows convulsed in an agony,
groaning only those words: 'To kill her! to kill her!' thinking
sometimes that I should be merciful to myself too, and die, and let her
live, and not care, since, after my death, I would not see her suffer,
for the dead know not anything: and to expect me to kill her with my own
hand was a little too much. Yet that one or other of us must die was
perfectly certain, for I knew that I was just on the brink of failing in
my oath, and matters here had reached an obvious crisis: unless we could
make up our minds to part...? putting the width of the earth between
us? That conception occurred to me: and in the turmoil of my thoughts it
seemed a possibility. Finally, about 5 P.M., I resolved upon something:
and first I leapt up, went down and across the house into the arsenal,
chose a small revolver, fitted it with cartridge, took it up-stairs,
lubricated it with lamp-oil, went down and out across the drawbridge,
walked two miles beyond the village, shot the revolver at a tree, found
its action accurate, a