I will not linger on the weary fortnight that passed before I even saw her again. I could teach, but not learn. My duties were not irksome to me, because they kept me near her; but my thoughts were beyond my control. It was not love only, but anxiety also, lest she were ill from the adventures of that night, that caused my distress. As the days went on, and no chance word about her reached me, I felt the soul within me beginning to droop. In vain, at night, I tried to read, in my own room. Nothing could fix my attention. I read and re-read the same page again and again; but although I seemed to understand every word and phrase as I read, I found when I had reached the close of the paragraph, that there lingered in my mind no ghost of the idea embodied in the words. It was just what one experiences in attempting to read when half-asleep. I tried Euclid, and fared a little better with that. A very simple equation I found I could manage, but when I attempted a more complex one—one in which a little imagination, or something bordering upon it, was necessary to find out the undefined object for which to substitute the unknown symbol, that it might be dealt with by thought—I found that the necessary power of concentrating was itself a missing factor. But it is foolish to dwell upon an individual variety of an almost universal stage in the life-fever. One night, as I sat in my room, I found, as usual, that it was impossible to read; and throwing the book aside, relapsed into that sphere of thought which now filled my soul, having for its centre the Lady Alice. I recalled her form as she lay on the couch, and a longing to see her, almost unbearable, arose within me. “Would to heaven,” I said to myself, “that will were power!”