Within me--and, I suppose, within every one else--there is a dual personality: not a good and a bad, as is so often shallowly said; but one that does, and another that watches. The doer seems to me to be myself; the watcher, he who stands, like an idler at the rail of a bridge, carelessly, even indifferently, observing the tide of my thought and action that flows beneath,--who is he? I do not know. But I do know that I have no control over him,--over his cynical smile, or his lip curling in good-natured contempt of me, or his shrug at self-excuse, or his moods when he stares down at the fretting stream with a look of weariness so profound that it is tragic. It was he who was more interested in the thoughts,--the passion, the protest, the defiance, and the dread,--which the sight of that face set to boiling within me. Sometimes he smiled cynically at the turmoil, and at other times he watched it with what seemed to me bitter disgust and disappointment and regret. While this tempest was struggling to boil over into action, Carlotta appeared. She had never stayed long at Washington after the first winter; she preferred, for the children and perhaps for herself, the quiet and the greater simplicity of Fredonia. But--"I got to thinking about it," said she, "and it seemed to me a bad idea for a man to be separated so long from his wife and children--and home influences." That last phrase was accompanied by one of her queer shrewd looks. "Your idea is not without merit," replied I judicially. "What are you smiling at?" she demanded sharply. "If it was a smile," said I, "it was at myself." "No, you were laughing at me. You think I am jealous." "Of what? Of whom?" She looked fixedly at me and finally said: "I want to tell you two things about myself and you. The first is that I am afraid of you." "Why?" said I. "I don't know," she answered. "And the second confession?" "That I never trust you." "Why?" "I don't know." "Yet you are always telling me I am cold." She laughed shortly. "So is a stick of dynamite," said she. She stayed on at Washington. XI BURBANK It was through Carlotta that I came to know Burbank well.