was
this easiest, simplest work of self-culture always too much for me? The
explanation has been written already in the three words that were many
enough, and plain enough, for my confession. I loved her.

The days passed, the weeks passed; it was approaching the third month
of my stay in Cumberland. The delicious monotony of life in our calm
seclusion flowed on with me, like a smooth stream with a swimmer who
glides down the current. All memory of the past, all thought of the
future, all sense of the falseness and hopelessness of my own position,
lay hushed within me into deceitful rest. Lulled by the Syren-song that
my own heart sung to me, with eyes shut to all sight, and ears closed
to all sound of danger, I drifted nearer and nearer to the fatal rocks.
The warning that aroused me at last, and startled me into sudden,
self-accusing consciousness of my own weakness, was the plainest, the
truest, the kindest of all warnings, for it came silently from HER.

We had parted one night as usual. No word had fallen from my lips, at
that time or at any time before it, that could betray me, or startle
her into sudden knowledge of the truth. But when we met again in the
morning, a change had come over her--a change that told me all.

I shrank then--I shrink still--from invading the innermost sanctuary of
her heart, and laying it open to others, as I have laid open my own.
Let it be enough to say that the time when she first surprised my
secret was, I firmly believe, the time when she first surprised her
own, and the time, also, when she changed towards me in the interval of
one night. Her nature, too truthful to deceive others, was too noble
to deceive itself. When the doubt that I had hushed asleep first laid
its weary weight on her heart, the true face owned all, and said, in
its own frank, simple language--I am sorry for him; I am sorry for
myself.

It said this, and more, which I could not then interpret. I understood
but too well the change in her manner, to greater kindness and quicker
readiness in interpreting all my wishes, before others--to constraint
and sadness, and nervous anxiety to absorb herself in the first
occupation she could seize on, whenever we happened to be left together
alone. I understood why the sweet sensitive lips smiled so rarely and
so restrainedly now, and why the clear blue eyes looked at me,
sometimes with the pity of an angel, sometimes with the innocent
perplexity of a child. But