“Well, then, here is the simple truth, told as simply as, by my utmost effort, I can tell it. For a period of some months, I had been in a condition which you must let me compare roughly to somnambulism--a sort of daze, a dull, half-waking trance. While in that condition, a great number of my mental and moral faculties had lain absolutely dormant--just as much so, as if I had not possessed them. From that unconscious fit into which I fell on the night of our wedding, I had never perfectly recovered. My body had recovered, yes, and a part of my mind--the every-day, working part. But the rest of my mind, the _better_ part of it, had never emerged from the coma which it sank into then. And during this period, I want to say, I do not think I was, in the ordinary sense, responsible for what I did. I was mentally responsible: that is, I knew what I was doing, and I chose to do it. But I was not exactly morally responsible, because morally I was blind. My moral sense--my heart and conscience, I mean, were in a state of suspended animation; and I acted without their guidance. I don't say this with a view to excusing myself. I say it, because I honestly believe that it is true, and because, to some extent, it accounts for my otherwise unaccountable way of acting. Well, let me call it somnambulism. Then, on that Friday afternoon, when I so unexpectedly caught sight of you in the lobby of Steinway Hall, there, at that instant, all of a sudden, I woke up; I came to my senses, in heart and mind was my complete self again. And awaking in this way, getting my moral eyes opened, my moral faculties into running order, I then for the first time, saw, realized, understood, what, while in that irresponsible, somnambulistic state, I had done. Dumfoundered, aghast, I saw the ruin I had wrought--ruin of your life, your world, and of mine--total, hopeless ruin. I have read of a man who dearly loved his wife, and who, one night, in his sleep, got up and murdered her. When he awoke next morning, and found her lying dead beside him, and made the horrible discovery that he himself had done it--well, he must have felt a little as I felt after I had seen you that day at Steinway Hall. And the worst of it--the aspect of it which was most unbearable, most infuriating--was this knowledge, that loomed up before me, as big and as unalterable as a mountain of granite: the knowledge that what I had done could never be undone; that the desolation to which I had reduced our world, could never be repaired; that, no matter how bitter my remorse was, no matter how poignant my regret, I could never atone for the wrong I had committed, never could win back again the treasure I had thrown away. It was a mountain of granite, I say, against which, frantically, with all my puny strength, I dashed myself; thereby making no impression, but falling back, bruised, stunned, disheartened. My knowledge now of your suffering, my knowledge