One night I could not sleep, but sat up in my room thinking. Why should she not love me? I am esteemed well-looking and intelligent, thought I, looking into the glass, as if to confirm my satisfactory judgment of myself. I gazed long and earnestly. Yes, certainly handsome, said I with my lips, but--fool! fool! said my mocking eyes; for at that moment there came out of their depths--there came a devil! Yes, a devil that glared at me from the glass! a devil that was, and yet was not, myself! a devil that had my form, and looked out of my face, but with its own cruel, mocking eyes! And he and I confronted each other in that horrible glass. I know not how long, but they told me afterward that I was found next morning making ghastly faces at myself. And then I was carried by spirits into a land of visions, where for a hundred years, or for a moment of time, I was flying through space, and clouds, and fire!--groping through dark caverns, millions of miles long, crying wildly for light and air; now a giant, entangled in myriads of chains that I could not break; now a reptile, writhing away from footsteps that made the earth reel and tremble beneath their tread; and at last waking, as if out of sleep, a poor, puny thing, with limbs like shadows, laughing or crying by turns for very feebleness. * * * * * As I arose from that bed I knew that I was changed. It was a secret thought, a secret that I have kept till now. I was not quite sure at first, but it thus fell out that I knew it well: One day William and I had been sitting for some time in the library, he reading and I looking at the faces that glowed in the red-hot coal, and thinking of Lucy and him. 'Where is Lucy?' said I, at length, 'Gone out into the village,' he answered, without looking from the book; 'first to buy gloves, then to see Miss Trip, the dancing mistress, who is ill, then to Hurst Park to tea, whence I am to fetch her at nine o'clock.' 'You seem to know all her movements,' I said, with a sneer. 'Certainly, he rejoined, 'she told me all that I have told you.' 'You always _are_ in her confidence,' said I, very angrily, as my blood rose. 'I believe so,' said he, calmly; though he looked at me with some surprise. 'And I never,' said I, between my teeth. 'That,' he said, 'is a matter with which I have no concern.' I ground my teeth, but I kept quiet. I kept quiet, though every nerve in my body tingled with rage, and my boiling blood rushed into my eyes till I could hardly see. 'Do you know,' I shouted, 'do you know that I love her--would die a thousand deaths for her?' He clasped his hands with a quick motion, as he said in a low voice, 'And so do I; and so would I.' 'Beast, fiend!' I screamed, 'does she--does she----' I could not get out the accursed words. 'We have been engaged,' he answered, divining what I would have asked, 'we have been engaged for some time, and----'