t time did I understand how selfish had been
my adoration of my wife,--how I had merely purchased her of her scheming
and avaricious mother,--how I had wronged her and one who loved
her,--how incompatible with her youth and brilliancy were my maturity
and unpoetic nature. Her conduct since our marriage was now fully
explained. My love for her was immeasurably increased, but I loathed
myself. I had but one thought, how reparation could best be made. I
swear before Heaven, that could it have been possible without staining
her name, I would have torn her from my heart, and given her to the one
who rightfully claimed her from me. This was impossible. Only by guilt
or vulgar disgrace could she become his. Then the question took
possession of me, 'How shall I win her love?--how shall I win her love?'
This repeated itself again and again, with a distinct and fearful
iteration, as if a demon were whispering it in my ear. A thousand mad
thoughts took possession of me, and suicide thrust itself on me. For a
few moments,--though it seemed an age of experience,--I was insane. The
blow had dispossessed my reason. Dimly, as in a drunken man, however,
still remained the ordinary instincts, and that perception, which, like
the muscles of respiration, keeps ever at work, let the mind be filled
as it may with thoughts and purposes that seem entirely to engross and
absorb it. I crept silently from the conservatory, and passing out into
the street, entered the house at the front. Dinner was soon served, as
usual, and my wife took her seat, with her customary manner. I, too, was
confident, exhibited no variation from mine. Her self-possession was
the result of control, mine of mere numbness. The machinery of life was
temporarily continuing its regular motion without any supervision.

This benumbed condition continued through a large portion of a sleepless
night. The unintermitted repetition of the query, 'How shall I win her
love?' tortured me into an agony like that experienced in a nightmare
dream. Slowly and gradually my reason began to work, and I methodically
commenced to elaborate a system by which to acquire what was now the
chief object of my life,--my wife's _love_. I arose in the morning
determined to obtain this, even should every other pursuit be
relinquished and every other desire sacrificed. My system was formed.
Life thereafter was to be devoted to it.

My first object was to create a change in her feelings toward my
rival;-