"I rushed from my friend's house; I entered no roof that night; my passions were awake, my fierce volcanic passions! Had I encountered Neville, I had assuredly murdered him; my soul was chaos, yet a tempestuous ray gave a dark light amid the storm; a glimmering, yet permanent irradiation mantled over the ruins among which I stood. I said to myself, 'I am mad, driven to desperation;' but, beneath this outward garb of my thought, I knew and recognised an interior form. I knew what I desired, what I intended, and what, though I tried to cheat myself into the belief that I wavered, I henceforth steadily pursued. There is, perhaps, no more dangerous mood of mind than when we doggedly pursue means, recklessly uncertain of their end. "Thus was I led to the fatal hour; a life of love, and a sudden bereavement, with such a thing the instrument of my ruin! A contempt for the order of the universe, a stern, demoniacal braving of fate, because I would rule, and put that right which God had let go wrong. Oh, let me not again blaspheme. God made the stars, and the green earth, within whose bosom Alithea lies. She also is his, and I will believe, despite the hellish interference that tainted and deflowered her earthly life, that now she is with the source of all good, reaping the reward of her virtues, the compensation for her suffering. Else, why are we created! To crawl forth, to suffer and die? I cannot believe it. Spirit of the blessed, omnipotence did not form perfection to shatter and dissipate the elements like broken glass! But I rave and wander; Alithea still lives and suffers at the time of which I write, and I erecting myself into a providence, resolved to put that right which was wrong, and cure the world's misrule. From that moment I never paused to look back; I set my soul upon the cast, and I am here. And Alithea! her mysterious grave you shall now approach.