"Although he could not force me to fulfill the contract, he could blast my life in its bloom--wither the tree to the core--make a desert round it--poison the very atmosphere that gave it nourishment and strength--and wait patient--to see it die, leaf by leaf, and branch by branch, This was his devilish project. Love--if ever so sacred a passion had found its way into his soul--was transformed into hate, deadly and unrelenting; the red current had become gall; and the same slow, insatiable energy, with which he had before urged and forced his suit, was now applied to torture and distract me. I wonder it did not drive me to some act of desperation! "And all this time I moved through society like others. Nobody suspected the vulture that was at my heart; and I had to endure the wretched necessity of acting a daily lie to the world. It gave a false severity to my manner--it made me seem austere and lofty, where I only meant to avert approaches which it would have been criminal to have admitted and deceived. And I had need of all that repellant armor; and it served me, and saved me--till I met you! "Shall I proceed any farther? Shall I tell you how a new state of existence seemed insensibly opening before me?--how the want in my heart became unconsciously filled?--and that which had been a dream to me all my life long, vague, flitting, and undefined, was now a reality, clear, fixed, and distinct? What that sympathy was it is needless to ask, which made me feel that your history was something like my own--that you, too, had some discontent with the world, that made you yearn for peace and solitude, and the refuge of love, like me. I fought bravely at first. You know not how earnestly I questioned myself--how I probed my wounded spirit, and battled with the temptation. All that was hidden from you; but it was not the less fierce and agonizing. The blessed thought and hope of freedom, of a happiness which I had never trusted myself to contemplate, was a strong and blinding fascination. I saw my wretchedness, and close at hand its perilous remedy. Doomed either way, which was I to choose? The world?--my soul? All was darkness and terror to me. Calamity had made me desperate; yet I was outwardly calm and self-sustained. But I was goaded too far at last; _he_ goaded me; and my resolution was taken; it was one plunge--and all was over. I fled from the misery I could no longer endure, and live; and I know the cost--I know the penalty--I see before me the retribution. Let it come--my fate is sealed!" XI.