assion with which she had inspired me--vexing my
heart, wearying my thoughts, before I had even spoken to her, as if the
perilous discovery of our marriage were already at hand! I have thought
since how unnatural I should have considered this, if I had read it in a
book.)

How could I best crush the desire to see her, to speak to her, on the
morrow? Should I leave London, leave England, fly from the temptation,
no matter where, or at what sacrifice? Or should I take refuge in my
books--the calm, changeless old friends of my earliest fireside hours?
Had I resolution enough to wear my heart out by hard, serious, slaving
study? If I left London on the morrow, could I feel secure, in my own
conscience, that I should not return the day after!

While, throughout the hours of the night, I was thus vainly striving to
hold calm counsel with myself; the base thought never occurred to me,
which might have occurred to some other men, in my position: Why
marry the girl, because I love her? Why, with my money, my station, my
opportunities, obstinately connect love and marriage as one idea; and
make a dilemma and a danger where neither need exist? Had such a thought
as this, in the faintest, the most shadowy form, crossed my mind, I
should have shrunk from it, have shrunk from my self; with horror.
Whatever fresh degradations may be yet in store for me, this one
consoling and sanctifying remembrance must still be mine. My love for
Margaret Sherwin was worthy to be offered to the purest and perfectest
woman that ever God created.

The night advanced--the noises faintly reaching me from the streets,
sank and ceased--my lamp flickered and went out--I heard the carriage
return with Clara from the ball--the first cold clouds of day rose and
hid the waning orb of the moon--the air was cooled with its morning
freshness: the earth was purified with its morning dew--and still I sat
by my open window, striving with my burning love-thoughts of Margaret;
striving to think collectedly and usefully--abandoned to a struggle ever
renewing, yet never changing; and always hour after hour, a struggle in
vain.

At last I began to think less and less distinctly--a few moments more,
and I sank into a restless, feverish slumber. Then began another, and
a more perilous ordeal for me--the ordeal of dreams. Thoughts and
sensations which had been more and more weakly restrained with each
succeeding hour of wakefulness, now rioted within me in perfect
liber