Day after day I watched her closely. Fear made observation keen. I had fondly hoped that both Mrs. Williams and I had been mistaken--that our commonplace minds had confounded the brisk and illogical expression of an agile intellect with madness. But conviction came at last: I could doubt no longer; her strange speech, her wild ways, her eyes sometimes startling me with their brilliancy, sometimes paining me with their sadness, admitted only of one interpretation. My pen is powerless to describe the feeling of misery that took possession of me. The stern necessity of self-control made the suffering more sharp. I dared not by word or look hint my suspicion, lest the avowal, however vague, might precipitate the fruition of her madness. My apprehensions exaggerated the results of observation, and gave to her actions and language a greater importance than they probably deserved. And all the long days were filled for me with a weird and tearful pathos. For her love grew greater and greater, grew to a wildness and depth that marked her derangement more plainly than any other illustration. She followed me from room to room, into the garden, sometimes at a distance, sometimes at my side. She would throw herself at my feet, rest her cheek on my knee and look up at me with her large and wonderful eyes, of which the beauty became more startling as her insanity grew more vigorous. I once fancied that her past held some sorrow which might contribute to mature, if it did not actually feed her madness. I had little faith in my power of winning confession; and her exquisite sensibilities and my own clumsy judgment alike prohibited the ordeal of examination. Yet I resolved to question her, and did, at wide intervals, and rather by implication than by direct interrogation; but won no more from her than she had before told me. She said that her married life had been miserable, but that its misery now was forgotten in my love. She never recurred to it. She dared not. She felt that she had been destined for me, and she thought there was something menacing to her future in remembering that another one occupied the position that should have been always mine. The task of questioning was sadly embarrassed by her inconsequential language. Day by day her speech grew more incoherent. Instinct, so far as her passions were concerned, supplied the place of memory; her memory grew visibly impaired. She could discuss with pertinent consistency the first portion of a topic; but the rest slipped from her, and she fell with strange abruptness into another subject, without manifesting the slightest uneasiness at the sharp departures of her mind. I took counsel of Mrs. Williams, who implored me to conceal my fears from my wife.