"When Emma went, I began to recognise the full extent of my peril. Suppose I had not been strong, and had tried to rob her of her rest by detaining her instead of prescribing as her physician. Incidental caresses are beautiful, tender, endearing things. But to abandon yourself to a banquet of them on a Neapolitan autumn night, in the darkness and silence of a great house, hushed for a fever patient--a banquet of caresses with the loveliest woman in the world--and not a human soul to save you from falling in love! No, already I love Emma as much as an English gentleman may love a friend's wife. She is to me the most beautiful, affectionate, loyal, respectable woman alive; and she has such a perfect freedom from _mauvaise honte_, as we used to say when I was studying that vile language at St. Omer, that she permits herself to grant me all the innocent caresses she would grant a brother. And she trusts herself with me too much. Pray God I may not mean these words 'too much.' I hope I am a gentleman. But I mean that she is too trustful, if I were a villain. * * * * * "Why did I let her go? There was no hurry; we were doing no harm,--nothing. It was restful for both of us, that standing side by side and pressure of friendly hands. I do not believe I ever felt so perfectly at peace with the world. "No; the point remains, _quo vadis?_ One cannot be perfectly certain, as certain as I should like to be, of anything stopping at a given point. And this soft air, this soft scene take away the powers of resistance. To yield to the temptation to love or kill seems natural here--to kill, not in the fierce rough-and-tumble of the North, but with the stab in the back, the poisoned bowl, or the measured duello of the South. "I must leave this. Nay, I will leave it this very night. I cannot sail for Malta, let me see, for one--two days; but I can take up my quarters on my ship, and the same healthy breath of the ocean blows on every sea. Even in this beautiful Circean Bay I shall be myself there--and fling away soft imaginations and soft longings, and think of the French! * * * * *