was enchantment; the air of love waved
round her, breathing balm into my heart: for a little while I had sat
with the Gods at their golden tables, I had tasted of all earth's bliss,
"both living and loving!" But now Paradise barred its doors against me;
I was driven from her presence, where rosy blushes and delicious sighs
and all soft wishes dwelt, the outcast of nature and the scoff of love!
I thought of the time when I was a little happy careless child, of my
father's house, of my early lessons, of my brother's picture of me when
a boy, of all that had since happened to me, and of the waste of years
to come--I stopped, faultered, and was going to turn back once more to
make a longer truce with wretchedness and patch up a hollow league with
love, when the recollection of her words--"I always told you I had no
affection for you"--steeled my resolution, and I determined to proceed.
You see by this she always hated me, and only played with my credulity
till she could find some one to supply the place of her unalterable
attachment to THE LITTLE IMAGE. * * * * * I am a little, a very little
better to-day. Would it were quietly over; and that this misshapen form
(made to be mocked) were hid out of the sight of cold, sullen eyes! The
people about me even take notice of my dumb despair, and pity me. What
is to be done? I cannot forget HER; and I can find no other like what
SHE SEEMED. I should wish you to call, if you can make an excuse, and
see whether or no she is quite marble--whether I may go back again at my
return, and whether she will see me and talk to me sometimes as an old
friend. Suppose you were to call on M---- from me, and ask him what his
impression is that I ought to do. But do as you think best. Pardon,
pardon.

P.S.--I send this from Scarborough, where the vessel stops for a few
minutes. I scarcely know what I should have done, but for this relief
to my feelings.

LETTER VII

My dear Friend, The important step is taken, and I am virtually a free
man. * * * What had I better do in these circumstances? I dare not
write to her, I dare not write to her father, or else I would. She has
shot me through with poisoned arrows, and I think another "winged wound"
would finish me. It is a pleasant sort of balm (as you express it)
she has left in my heart! One thing I agree with you in, it will remain
there for ever; but yet not very long. It festers, and consumes me. If
it were not for my lit