hich I am now telling I have
clear memories of a time when we talked like brother and sister, or like
angels if you will, and hard upon that came a time when we were planning
in all our moments together how and when and where we might meet in
secret and meet again.

Things drift with a phantom-like uncertainty into my mind and pass
again; those fierce motives of our transition have lost now all stable
form and feature, but I believe there was a curious tormenting urgency
in our jealousy of those others, of Justin on my part and of Rachel on
hers. At first we had talked quite freely about Rachel, had discussed my
conceivable marriage with her. We had indeed a little forced that topic,
as if to reassure ourselves of the honesty of our new footing. But the
force that urged us nearer pervaded all our being. It was hard enough to
be barred apart, to snatch back our hands from touching, to avoid each
other's eyes, to hurry a little out of the dusk towards the lit house
and its protecting servants, but the constant presence and suggestion of
those others from whom there were no bars, or towards whom bars could be
abolished at a look, at an impulse, exacerbated that hardship, roused a
fierce insatiable spirit of revolt within us. At times we grew angry
with each other's formalism, came near to quarrelling....

I associate these moods with the golden stillnesses of a prolonged and
sultry autumn, and with slowly falling leaves....

I will not tell you how that step was taken, it matters very little to
my story, nor will I tell which one of us it was first broke the
barriers down.

Sec. 9

But I do want to tell you certain things. I want to tell you them
because they are things that affect you closely. There was almost from
the first a difference between Mary and myself in this, that I wanted to
be public about our love, I wanted to be open and defiant, and
she--hesitated. She wanted to be secret. She wanted to keep me; I
sometimes think that she was moved to become my mistress because she
wanted to keep me. But she also wanted to keep everything else in her
life,--her position, her ample freedoms and wealth and dignity. Our love
was to be a secret cavern, Endymion's cave. I was ready enough to do
what I could to please her, and for a time I served that secrecy, lied,
pretended, agreed to false addresses, assumed names, and tangled myself
in a net-work of furtive proceedings. These are things that poison and
consume honest