giant and bold strength of Gerald quail
before your bent brow; I had seen even the hardy pride of Montreuil
baffled by your curled lip and the stern sarcasm of your glance; I had
seen you, too, in your wild moments of ungoverned rage, and I knew that
if earth held one whose passions were fiercer than my own it was you.
But your passions were sustained even in their fiercest excess; your
passions were the mere weapons of your mind: my passions were the
torturers and the tyrants of mine. Your passions seconded your will;
mine blinded and overwhelmed it. From my infancy, even while I loved you
most, you awed me; and years, in deepening the impression, had made it
indelible. I could not confront the thought of your knowing all, and of
meeting you after that knowledge. And this fear, while it unnerved me at
some moments, at others only maddened my ferocity the more by the stings
of shame and self-contempt.

I fled from you: you pursued; you gained upon me; you remember how I was
preserved. I dashed through the inebriated revellers who obstructed your
path, and reached my own lodging, which was close at hand; for the same
day on which I learned Isora's change of residence I changed my own
in order to be near it. Did I feel joy for my escape? No: I could have
gnawed the very flesh from my bones in the agony of my shame. "I could
brave," I said, "I could threat, I could offer violence to the woman who
rejected me, and yet I could not face the rival for whom I am scorned!"
At that moment a resolution flashed across my mind, exactly as if a
train of living fire had been driven before it. Morton, I resolved to
murder you, and in that very hour! A pistol lay on my table; I took it,
concealed it about my person, and repaired to the shelter of a large
portico, beside which I knew that you must pass to your own home in the
same street. Scarcely three minutes had elapsed between the reaching my
house and the leaving it on this errand. I knew, for I had heard
swords clash, that you would be detained some time in the street by the
rioters; I thought it probable also that you might still continue the
search for me; and I knew even that, had you hastened at once to your
home, you could scarcely have reached it before I reached my shelter.
I hurried on; I arrived at the spot; I screened myself and awaited your
coming. You came, borne in the arms of two men; others followed in the
rear; I saw your face destitute of the hue and aspect of life