I fled from the house, as a fiend flies from a being whom he has possessed. I returned at night to look up at the window, and linger by the door, and keep watch beside the home which held Isora. Such, in her former abode, had been my nightly wont. I had no evil thought nor foul intent in this customary vigil,--no, not one! Strangely enough, with the tempestuous and overwhelming emotions which constituted the greater part of my love was mingled--though subdued and latent--a stream of the softest, yea, I might add almost of the holiest tenderness. Often after one of those outpourings of rage and menace and despair, I would fly to some quiet spot and weep till all the hardness of my heart was wept away. And often in those nightly vigils I would pause by the door and murmur, "This shelter, denied not to the beggar and the beggar's child, this would you deny to me if you could dream that I was so near you. And yet, had you loved me, instead of lavishing upon me all your hatred and your contempt,--had you loved me, I would have served and worshipped you as man knows not worship or service. You shudder at my vehemence now: I could not then have breathed a whisper to wound you. You tremble now at the fierceness of my breast: you would then rather have marvelled at its softness." I was already at my old watch when you encountered me: you addressed me; I answered not; you approached me, and I fled. Fled there--there was the shame, and the sting of my sentiments towards you. I am not naturally afraid of danger, though my nerves are sometimes weak and have sometimes shrunk from it. I have known something of peril in late years when my frame has been bowed and broken--perils by storms at sea, and the knives of robbers upon land--and I have looked upon it with a quiet eye. But you, Morton Devereux, you I always feared. I had seen from your childhood others whose nature was far stronger than mine yield and recoil at yours; I had seen the 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.