health was now slowly returning to them, health and vitality. The depths of my spirit--it is a canting phrase, but it expresses exactly what I mean--the depths of my spirit, which had long lain stagnant, were being stirred. I had always comprehended, as a mere intellectual proposition, how much you must have suffered. It was obvious. Dull and half stupefied as I was, I could not help comprehending that. It was like two-and-two-make-four. But the comprehension had got no further than my brain. It had not touched my heart, and made it shudder with horror, and burn with remorse, for my own baseness, and for the agony that I had inflicted upon you, as it has done since. I had comprehended, but I had not felt it. My love of you had been struck dead; and my imagination--or whatever the faculty is, which causes us to sympathize with another's pain--was failing to act. So I had gone about the daily affairs of my life, in no wise troubled or affected by the fact, which I was perfectly aware of, that you, at the same time, in solitude, were suffering the worst sorrow possible in the world--yes, absolutely the worst; I know it. I had gone about, and got what apology for enjoyment, what vulgar amusement, I could, out of life; had eaten, drunken, talked, laughed, read, smoked, paid calls, listened to music, all precisely as though you did not exist, never had existed; and finally I had become engaged and married; and all the while I knew what hopeless, speechless anguish you were enduring, thanks to me; I knew it, but did not care. Now and then I would think of it; but so dead was my heart, the thought never aroused a single throe of pain in it. I thought of it on the night of my wedding. In the midst of the dancing, in the midst of the loud, romping merriment, I thought: 'What is she doing at this moment?' But it was nothing like sympathy or self-reproach, that prompted me. It was a sense of the curious incongruity. I shrugged my shoulders, said to myself that I could not help it, and went on dancing. This will show you how low I had sunken, how callous I had become; and you may imagine how I despise myself, how I hate and abhor myself, as I recall it now. Oh, my God! my God!--Christine, for God's sake, when you read this, don't harden against me, because of it, and refuse to read any more. Don't stop reading. For God's sake, in mercy to me, go on reading to the end. Don't close your ears against me, and refuse to listen. The only alleviation of my torments that I have, is the hope that you will read this letter through, and understand how I have repented.... Well, as I say, this state of being was now slowly, gradually, changing. Not a day passed now but I would think of you, and of every thing that had been between you and me, from the beginning to the end; and now these thoughts did arouse pains in my heart--vague pains, that I did not understand--dull pains, such as one feels in sleep, or while under the influence of an