e room with her, and feign to be engaged upon Heineccius,
surpassed my strength. So that I fell instead upon the expedient of
absenting myself so much as I was able; taking out classes and sitting
there regularly, often with small attention, the test of which I found
the other day in a note-book of that period, where I had left off to
follow an edifying lecture and actually scribbled in my book some very
ill verses, though the Latinity is rather better than I thought I could
ever have compassed. The evil of this course was unhappily near as great
as its advantage. I had the less time of trial, but I believe, while
that time lasted, I was tried the more extremely. For she being so much
left to solitude, she came to greet my return with an increasing fervour
that came nigh to overmaster me. These friendly offers I must
barbarously cast back; and my rejection sometimes wounded her so cruelly
that I must unbend and seek to make it up to her in kindness. So that
our time passed in ups and downs, tiffs and disappointments, upon the
which I could almost say (if it may be said with reverence) that I was
crucified.

The base of my trouble was Catriona's extraordinary innocence, at which
I was not so much surprised as filled with pity and admiration. She
seemed to have no thought of our position, no sense of my struggles;
welcomed any mark of my weakness with responsive joy; and when I was
drove again to my retrenchments, did not always dissemble her chagrin.
There were times when I have thought to myself, 'If she were over head
in love, and set her cap to catch me, she would scarce behave much
otherwise;' and then I would fall again into wonder at the simplicity of
woman, from whom I felt (in these moments) that I was not worthy to be
descended.

There was one point in particular on which our warfare turned, and of
all things, this was the question of her clothes. My baggage had soon
followed me from Rotterdam, and hers from Helvoet. She had now, as it
were, two wardrobes; and it grew to be understood between us (I could
never tell how) that when she was friendly she would wear my clothes,
and when otherwise her own. It was meant for a buffet, and (as it were)
the renunciation of her gratitude; and I felt it so in my bosom, but was
generally more wise than to appear to have observed the circumstance.

Once, indeed, I was betrayed into a childishness greater than her own;
it fell in this way. On my return from classes, thinking