“Ah! do not ask the need, if you still love me,” was all she said, and looked at me with such eyes--so tearful, bright, so sad, soliciting--that, though I did not less doubt, I could no longer deny. I resumed the seat beside her. She again placed her fingers in my hair, and in a little while sunk into a profound slumber, only broken by an occasional sob, which subsided into a sigh. Were she guilty--such was the momentary suggestion of the good angel--could she sleep thus?--thus quietly, confidingly, beside the man she had wronged--her fingers still paddling in his hair--her sleeping eyes still turning in the direction of his face? To the clear, open mind, the suggestion would have had the force of a conclusive argument; but mine was no longer a clear, open mind. I had the disease of the blind heart upon me, and all things came out upon my vision as through a glass, darkly. The evil one at my elbow jeered when the good angel spoke. “Fool! does she not see that she can blind you still!” Then, in the vanity and vexation of my spirit, I mused upon it further, and said to myself:--“Ay, but she will find, ere many days, that I am no longer to be blinded!” The scales were never thicker upon my sight than when I boasted in this foolish wise. CHAPTER XXXIV. A FATHER'S GRIEFS. She continued to improve, but slowly. Her organization was always very delicate. Her frame was becoming thin, almost to meagreness; and this last disaster, whatever might be its cause, had contributed still more to weaken a constitution which education and nature had never prepared for much hard encounter. But, though I saw these proofs of feebleness--of a feebleness that might have occasioned reasonable apprehensions of premature decay, and possibly very rapid decline--there were little circumstances constantly occurring--looks shown, words spoken--which kept up the irritation of my soul, and prevented me from doing justice to her enfeebled condition. My sympathies were absorbed in my suspicions. My heart was the debateable land of self. The blind passion which enslaved it, I need scarce say, was of a nature so potent, that it could easily impregnate, with its own color, all the objects of its survey. Seen through the eyes of suspicion, there is no truth, no virtue; the smile is that of the snake; the tear, that of the crocodile; the assurance, that of the traitor. There is no act, look, word, of the suspected object, however innocent, which, to the diseased mind of jealousy, does not suggest conjectures and arguments, all conclusive or confirmatory of its doubts and fears. It is not necessary to say that I shrunk from Julia's endearment, requited her smiles with indifference; and, though I did not avoid her presence--I could not, in the few days when her case was doubtful--yet exhibited, in all respects, the conduct of one who was in a sort of Coventry.