When Alice Clair first confessed her love for me, it was with weeping, and an excess of emotion, which alarmed me. Her whole frame was shaken, as if by an ague. I had endeavored, for a long time, to wring the secret from her. I wished her to say the words, '_I do love you!_' I wished her promise. I now can easily see her hesitation. She knew me better than I did myself. She saw I was capable of any thing, and yet insensible to every thing, but pleasure. She was ambitious. She wished her lover--her serious and true lover--the man she expected to marry--to possess strength. Perhaps she felt her own weakness, and saw her need of some strong staff to lean upon. She saw that I had not much determination in any course that interfered with my pleasure. Hence her unwillingness to acknowledge me as her lover, to the world. She wished to keep me in her chains--to hold me from others--and, although she loved me, I am convinced, still at times there was a taint of coquetry in her manner to me in public, that made me appear ridiculous. I could not, would not, bear this, and I determined to offer myself to her, and in case of refusal to go--I knew not where. I know of nothing so laughable as feigned passion. It must put people to a world of trouble, to play extatics, to weep tears, to kiss passionately, to embrace, while the heart is ice, and the temper clouded; to be playing lover, while one is thinking how long it is before dinner. I had worked myself up into quite a passion. I thought my whole soul was absorbed in this affair. I wished to be married forthwith. I could not think of delay; and in these moods used to press my suit with a mad earnestness, and ask her acknowledged love, with all my heart, and with a temporary sincerity.