ly for listless want of
occupation. All at once I came upon an entry, made in connection with my
mother's illness, which recalled to me the discovery I believed I had
made of a remedy for her disease, had it only been applied in its
earlier stages. It had slipped out of my mind, but now my memory leaped
upon it with irresistible force.

I must tell the whole truth, however terrible and humiliating it may be.
Whether I had been true or false to myself up to that moment I cannot
say. I had taken upon myself the care, and, if possible, the cure of
this man, who was my enemy, if I had an enemy in the world. His life and
mine could not run parallel without great grief and hurt to me, and to
one dearer than myself. Now that a better chance was thrust upon me in
his favor, I shrank from seizing it with unutterable reluctance. I
turned heart-sick at the thought of it. I tried my utmost to shake off
the grip of my memory. Was it possible that, in the core of my heart, I
wished this man to die?

Yes, I wished him to die. Conscience flashed the answer across the inner
depths of my soul, as a glare of lightning over the sharp crags and
cruel waves of our island in a midnight storm. I saw with terrible
distinctness that there had been lurking within a sure sense of
satisfaction in the certainty that he must die. I had suspected nothing
of it till that moment. When I told him it was the instinct of a
physician to save his patient, I spoke the truth. But I found something
within me deeper than instinct, that was wailing and watching for the
fatal issue of his malady, with a tranquil security so profound that it
never stirred the surface of my consciousness, or lifted up its ghostly
face to the light of conscience.

I took up my note-book, and went away to my room, lest Jack should come
in suddenly, and read my secret on my face. I thrust the book into a
drawer in my desk, and locked it away out of my sight. What need had I
to trouble myself with it or its contents? I found a book, one of
Charles Dickens's most amusing stories, and set myself resolutely to
read it; laughing aloud at its drolleries, and reading faster and
faster; while all the time thoughts came crowding into my mind of my
mother's pale, worn face, and the pains she suffered, and the remedy
found out too late. These images grew so strong at last that my eyes ran
over the sentences mechanically, but my brain refused to take in the
meaning of them. I threw the book fro