"For a long while I could not sleep. The theme from the Prelude sounded constantly in my ears. At midnight I arose, and, going softly into the neighboring room, gazed at the beloved faces of my wife and child by the light of the little night-lamp. The charm worked, and I passed a perfectly quiet, dreamless night. But my first waking thought was again--danger! "You will understand why the matter seemed so serious to me, when I tell you, that I am one of those with whom all spiritual crises complete themselves on the instant, without delay or hesitation, with the calm fatality of a natural law. Although it is often well to understand one's self at once without being obliged to question mind or heart--like the commander of some fortress, who, recognizing the superiority of the besieger, needs no council of war--yet, in either case, if time can be won, everything may be saved, and the relief may come which would have been too late, if there had been a premature surrender. "Thus, perhaps, it might have been better for me, and I might have acted more wisely that morning, if I had not regarded the matter as an unavoidable decree of fate. The symptoms were indeed precisely the same as when I fell so suddenly and violently in love with my wife. But the situation was different. With a wife and child, and eight added years--acknowledge that you find it inexcusable to yield thus passively to a passion, instead of opposing it with all my strength, and calling the good spirits of house and home to my aid. "Strange to say, notwithstanding this new affection, I was not for a moment untrue to what I had previously loved; neither did I think coldly of my wife, nor wish her absent that I might have only that other face before my eyes. It was as if one of my heart's chambers had been empty and was now occupied; but between it and the next the door was standing open, and the two occupants were on the best of terms, even crossing the threshold now and then to visit each other. "That may seem to you merely an idle fancy. It is only a miserable attempt to explain the remarkable condition in which I found myself--a condition not quite so clear then as to-day, since at first it seemed treason towards my dear wife, and I bitterly reproached myself for it. Soon, however, I reassured myself that I took nothing from her by this division of my heart; that, on the contrary, my strong, pure love for her received new nourishment through this quickening of my inner life. "All this I tell to you alone. Thousands would consider it self-deception or morbid extravagance. Knowledge of the human heart is still in its swaddling-clothes, notwithstanding the age of the world, and most people never go beyond the A B C, even though they consider themselves experienced. "As I said, the situation was new to me, and I needed time to understand and pardon myself. I remained at home again that morning, for, on the day before, I had not written a single letter.