But my journal, to which he looked forward with such pleasure, and which I determined should be so frank and free and full a record of my life, telling it all out to him in so far as one human heart can break the bar of its solitude in words to another--what has become of that? To keep any freshness and any truth in it at all, I must make this record of what has passed for myself, waiting it indeed, but laying it by as a thing that is done with--as a chronicle of the truth for reference, for precisely that which must not be brought into my letters to Alston is that relief for the feelings and the fears which must be hidden from him. What are these fears? How often I ask myself that question, and I never find an answer! The man has gone; not alone has he pledged his word--he could hardly expect me to set much store by that; but he knows it is for his own interest, for his own safety, for the future preservation of the good relations between him and Alston, which, false as all pretext to friendship is on his part, are, nevertheless, valuable to him, that he should keep his promise to me--that he should remain away; that he should never attempt to see me or to communicate with me while I am alone. A thousand times a day I tell myself this; I strive to feel my freedom; I recall the oppression of his presence: I remember my dislike to him long before I knew the secret unconscious origin it had; and I ask myself why I do not exult, why I am not able to bear with more than composure anything which has led to such an emancipation? But it is not so. The presence of the enemy seems to hem me in, an evil influence is in the air I breathe; no effort frees me from this morbid terror, of which I am half ashamed, while I write this secret record no eyes but my own are ever to see. How cleverly, how skilfully this man has carried out this sudden and complete change of all his plans; how reasonably he seems to have accounted for leaving New York! No one seems surprised, and I am quite certain not the slightest shade of suspicion that his departure is of any consequence to me has presented itself to the mind of any of our common acquaintance, though the close tie between him and Alston is perfectly well known. It is just this power, this influence over others, which makes me so afraid of him even now. What if on Alston's return he took some other means of alienating him from me! The feminine inferiority, the absence of a power of understanding business matters, will serve him no longer: he won't try to revive that theory when Alston returns; he shall find that I have administered every affair which he left in my charge too well to be set down as an incapable for the future; but he may try a more subtle means. I believe the love of a man like Warren is half passion, half hatred, and that the hatred swallows up the passion when it is effectually checked. Whence that notion has come to me, I know not,