Remember, he who had loved her and made her happy, and had wronged her and made her wretched—he had seen her beautiful face beaming with heavenly happiness, or quivering with anxiety, or darkened by despair; but he had never—never once seen it distorted by passion. Oh, how he longed for the beautiful vision to be realized to him—longed and feared! What would he not have given to have had her then by his bedside? He felt how soft and cool her fingers would fall upon his fevered forehead; he saw how lovingly her eyes would look on him; he heard how sweetly her tones would soothe him. Yet it was not for all this he wanted her at his side. It was that he might make what atonement was yet in his power for the wrongs he had done her; that he might lay his proud manhood low at the feet of this meek girl, and ask her pardon; that he might take her to his heart again, and devote his life to make hers happy. Oh, that he might do her some great service, and so win her back! He wished now that she had been poor, so that he might have enriched her; or sick, so that he might have taken her all over the world for her health; or that she had had an enemy, so that he might have killed or crippled that enemy and dragged him to her feet. And here one of those crouching furies stirred again in his heart, and a feverish excitement made him irrational. Oh, that she were poor, or ill, or abused, that he might enrich her, or serve her, or defend her, and so win the right to ask her forgiveness! But she was none of these. She was as independent of him as any queen could be. She was immensely wealthy, perfectly healthy, and highly esteemed; and, finally, no one had ever abused her but himself; and on himself only could he take vengeance. He was an utter bankrupt, without the power of bringing any offering to her feet in exchange for her mercy. When tortured by these thoughts, he would so toss and groan as to raise his fever and inflame his wounds. And all this very much protracted his recovery. And through all this gloom and horror still he saw the heavenly vision, like Dante’s angel at the gates of Hell, and still he longed to have it realized; longed, yet feared; and ever he prayed: “Oh! that I could do her some great service! Oh, that the Lord would take pity on me and give me the power!” Alexander, among his other thoughts, of course thought of the duel that had laid him upon this bed of penance. In the natural reaction—the calmness that succeeded to the excitement of his passions, when reason had opportunity to act—he saw that he had no just cause for the jealousy that had driven him to one of the maddest acts of his life.