Had I, indeed, treated her harshly,--had I rejected the offer of her young and innocent heart? Very puzzling and embarrassing question this, and especially to a man who had nothing of the coxcomb in his nature, none of that prompting of self-love that would suggest a vain reply. I felt that it was very natural _she_ should have been struck by the attractive features of my character, but I felt this without a particle of conceit. I even experienced a sense of sorrow as I thought over it, just as a conscientious siren might have regretted that nature had endowed her with such a charming voice; and this duty--for it was a duty--discharged, I bethought me of my own future. I had a mission, which was to see Kate Herbert and give her Miss Crofton's letter. In doing so, I must needs throw off all disguises and mockeries, and be Potts, the very creature she sneered at, the man whose mere name was enough to suggest a vulgar life and a snob's nature! No matter what misery it may give, I will do it manfully. _She_ may never appreciate--the world at large may never appreciate--what noble motives were hidden beneath these assumed natures, mere costumes as they were, to impart more vigor and persuasiveness to sentiments which, uttered in the undress of Potts, would have carried no convictions with them. Play Macbeth in a paletot, perform Othello in “pegtops,” and see what effect you will produce! Well, my pretended station and rank were the mere gauds and properties that gave force to my opinions. And now to relinquish these, and be the actor, in the garish light of the noonday, and a shabby-genteel coat and hat! “I will do it,” muttered I,--“I will do it, but the suffering will be intense!” When the prisoner sentenced to a long captivity is no more addressed by his name, but simply called No. 18, or 43, it is said that the shock seems to kill the sense of identity with him, and that nothing more tends to that stolid air of indifference, that hopeless inactivity of feature, so characteristic of a prison life; in the very same way am I affected when limited to my Potts nature, and condemned to confine myself within the narrow bounds of that one small identity. From what Prince Max has said at the _table d'hôte_ at Bregenz, it was clear that Mrs. Keats had already learned I was not the young prince of the House of Orleans; but, in being disabused of one error, she seemed to have fallen into another; and it behoved me to explain that I was not a rope-dancer or a mountebank. “She, too, shall know me in my Potts nature,” said I; “she also shall recognize me in the 'majesty of myself.'” I was not very sure of what that was, but found it in Hegel.