I ate my breakfast of coffee and rolls in silence and humility: old Joanna had no cause whatever to complain of violent manifestations from me. I spoke to her submissively and gently. I even entertained the question whether it might not be prudent to lay the case before her and entreat her advice upon it. But shame prevented me; I could not steel myself to endure her gaze of incredulity deepening into contempt. No--as I had struggled in the solitude of my own heart, so in the same solitude would I suffer and submit. If I was really to become a slave, let me at least conceal my fetters. Joanna could not succour me, for she had never made the resolutions and embraced the principles that I had--only to see them, at this late day, violated and broken. In a word, I determined to hold my peace and to put the best face possible upon my discomfiture. By the time I had arrived at this decision it was already afternoon, and my customary walking hour was at hand. Should I go out as usual, or not? I had refrained from going yesterday, but no good effects had come of my forbearance. On the other hand, if I found reason to remain at home to-day, the same reason would be in as good force to-morrow, and the day after; and the logical result must be that I should never go out at all. Now this was a prospect which I could not bring myself to contemplate. In the first place, I was naturally of an active and energetic temperament, and my health demanded plenty of vigorous exercise in the open air. Secondly, although my pride was fain to put up with the lot of a slave, I was scarcely as yet prepared to regard myself as a prisoner likewise: and finally, if I did go out, the chances were a hundred or perhaps a thousand to one that I did not meet her. Moreover, what if I did? I could not well be worse off than I was now; and there might be a remote possibility that a more deliberate scrutiny of the object of my infatuation would tend to my disenchantment. Since I have thus betrayed my secret, I may as well pause here and make a thorough confession. Yes--there could be no doubt about it; I--Thomas Wyndham--was in love at last, and that, too, with a woman I did not know and who did not know me. Nothing could have been more inopportune, nothing more undesirable, nothing more impossible--but nothing was more certain! I loved. It had come upon me no less abruptly than overwhelmingly. A chance encounter in the street--a look--an indrawn breath--and I, who up to my five-and-twentieth birthday had laughed at scars, now felt a wound which not all the drowsy syrups of the East could medicine. There was no palliating feature in the case; it was not only love, it was love at first sight; it was not only love at first sight, it was love unrequited. And once more, the lover was Tom Wyndham!