I returned to London, but found no repose: I had fled from my fate as a miscreant from his crime. How painful it must have been to a family so worthy of my homage, of my respect, of my gratitude, to receive a sort of refusal from the unknown man whom they had welcomed, to whom they had offered a new home with a simplicity, an absence of suspicion, of precaution, almost patriarchal in character! I imagined Charlotte's grief, the just reproaches with which I was liable and deserved to be covered: for, after all, I had taken pleasure in yielding to an inclination of which I knew the insuperable unlawfulness. Had I, in fact, made a vain attempt at seduction, without taking into account the heinousness of my conduct? But whether I stopped, as I did, in order to remain an honest man, or overcame all obstacles in order to surrender to an inclination stigmatized beforehand through my conduct, I could only have plunged the object of that seduction into sorrow or regret. From these bitter reflections I abandoned myself to other thoughts no less filled with bitterness: I cursed my marriage, which, according to the false perception of a mind at that time very sick, had thrown me out of my course and was robbing me of happiness. I did not reflect that, on account of the ailing temperament to which I was subject, and the romantic notions of liberty which I cherished, a marriage with Miss Ives would have been as painful to me as a more independent union. One thing within me remained pure and charming, although profoundly sad: the image of Charlotte; that image ended by prevailing over my revolts against my fate. I was tempted a hundred times to return to Bungay, not to appear before the troubled family, but to hide by the road-side to see Charlotte pass, to follow her to the temple where we had the same God, if not the same altar, in common, to offer that woman, through the medium of Heaven, the inexpressible ardour of my vows, to pronounce, at least in thought, the prayer from the nuptial benediction which I might have heard from a clergyman's lips in that temple: "O God,... look mercifully upon this thy handmaid. ... now to be joined in wedlock.... May it be to her a yoke of love and peace.... May she be fruitful in offspring ... that they may both see their children's children unto the third and fourth generation, and arrive at a desired old age[193]."