Years have passed since that awful, memorable event. I have often tried to analyze and comprehend my feelings and condition at that time. I had such implicit, absolute confidence in the virtue of my wife that I would have risked my soul in proof of it. I had such respect for that man that nothing but overwhelming proof could have convinced me of his lack of integrity. I was rather proud of his acquaintance, pleased with what I considered his polite attentions to my wife. I would have felt it degrading, not only to them, but to myself, to have entertained the slightest suspicion of the least impropriety. This was my condition before the fearful awakening came. Then it came so suddenly, like a flash of lightning before my eyes, that I was bewildered, stupefied. For the moment I could not realize anything, either that I existed or could think or feel—paralyzed is the best word I can use,—in thought and feeling. Then there flashed through me a contempt, a thorough disgust for those two things as if they were but slimy toads in the mire that were beneath my notice, and too nasty for me to touch or look at. With this latter feeling overpowering me, I escaped from what, had I remained a moment more, would have become a revenge, and I would have committed a terrible deed, not a crime, in killing them both, if I could. I think I would have been justified in doing this, and yet, and yet, there would have been a fearful remembrance of it ever afterward. I wonder why I acted as I did, and still am heartily glad that I did not act otherwise. Mr. Jasper was my kindest friend when the shadow of death was over my house. He walked beside me to the cemetery, and stood beside me in the silence at the grave, and returned with me in the carriage. He scarcely spoke a word in all that time, but I felt the sympathy of his heart. The shadow of death brooded within my house, the stillness was awful, almost beyond endurance, and I was terribly alone. I could well apply the lines of Shelley to myself: “As the earth when leaves are dead, As the night when sleep is sped, As the heart when joy is fled, I am left lone, alone.” CHAPTER XV. The next morning my friend called, and we had a long conversation on the veranda. He said, “I was not a little surprised that you did not have the chaplain and no kind of service at the grave. Not that I personally was dissatisfied, but rather that you dared to go against the usual custom.”