“Lady Alice, I have not touched you. Yet I am to blame, though not as you think. Could I help longing to see you? And if the longing passed, ere I was aware, into a will that you should come, and you obeyed it, forgive me.” I hid my face in my hands, overcome by conflicting emotions. A kind of stupor came over me. When, recovering, I lifted my head, she was standing by the closet-door. “I have waited,” she said, “only to make one request of you.” “Do not utter it, Lady Alice. I know what it is; and I give you my word and solemn promise that I will never do so again.” She thanked me, smiled most sweetly, and vanished. What nights I had after this, in watching and striving lest unawares I should be led to the exercise of my new power! I allowed myself to think of her as much as I pleased in the daytime, or at least as much as I dared; for when occupied with my pupils, I dreaded lest any abstraction should even hint that I had a thought to conceal. I knew that I could not hurt her then; for that only in the night did she enter that state of existence in which my will could exercise authority over her. But at night—at night—when I knew she lay there, and might be lying here; when but a thought would bring her, and that thought was fluttering its wings, ready to wake from the dreams of my heart; then the struggle was fearful. “Bring her yet once, and tell her all—tell her how madly, hopelessly you love her—she will forgive you,” said a voice within me; but I heard it as the voice of the tempter, and kept down the thought which might have grown to the will. FOOTNOTES [4] _Hamlet_, Act 1, Scene i. Studies in Animal Life. “Authentic tidings of invisible things;— Of ebb and flow, and ever-during power, And central peace subsisting at the heart Of endless agitation.”—THE EXCURSION. CHAPTER VI. Every organism a colony—What is a paradox?—An organ is an independent individual, and a dependent one—A branch of coral—A colony of polypes—The Siphonophora—Universal dependence—Youthful aspirings—Our interest in the youth of great men—Genius and labour—Cuvier’s college life; his appearance in youth; his arrival in Paris—Cuvier and Geoffrey St. Hilaire—Causes of Cuvier’s success—One of his early ambitions—M. le Baron—_Omnia vincit labor_—Conclusion.