He assigned as a reason for not having adopted legal means to compel the fulfillment of the contract, his fear of driving Astræa to extremities. He had always apprehended that the moment he adopted any step of that kind, she would make her escape from him; and his policy was to keep on terms with her, at all events, and by a system of small, perpetual persecution, to subjugate her at last. And now that she was gone, and that she had put the world between them, what course did he intend to pursue? Implacable vengeance against me--peace and pardon for her! This unintelligible being, whose person was not more hideous than his mind, had yet in the depths of his nature one drop of sweetness that redeemed and made him human. This love had survived all hatreds and revenges; and now that hope was over, that its object never could soothe his agonies or reward his devotion, that even the sufferings he was undergoing on her account only rendered him more repulsive in her eyes, nothing but tenderness and forgiveness toward her remained, with the bitterest regrets and self-accusations for the wrongs he had done her and the issues to which he had forced her. How such a flower of noble and delicate feeling could have sprung up in such a soil was, indeed, inexplicable. But it is wonderful how a great sorrow purifies and strengthens the soul! But for me? There was no clemency for me. The concentrated venom of his nature was reserved for a man who had robbed him of the miserable right of persecuting Astræa. Had I simply made her unhappy by awakening a passion in her heart, and then abandoning her upon the discovery of her situation (which was exactly what he appeared to have calculated upon), he would have forgiven me; he might have even been grateful to me for having humiliated her, and cast her helpless at his feet. But the crime I had committed in loving her too well to forsake her, admitted of no palliation. He could extract nothing out of it but vengeance. The sleepless hostility with which the Indian follows the trail of his foe, is not more vindictive and persevering than the feelings of hatred with which he coiled himself up for the spring which he was nursing all his strength to make upon me. He had not yet been able to get out of the house--but he was coming! No inducements, no arguments, founded on mercy or justice, could move him to sue for a dissolution of the marriage. He was determined to hold that horror over our heads, so that the vulture should tear our hearts, and shriek "despair!" in our ears forever and ever. He had the power in his own hands to embitter our whole lives, and could distill the last dregs of the poison that was to rack and madden us.