Unless I could tear my heart out, and paint _it_, with all the fierce passions fermenting in it, I might as well not paint any thing at all. Now, at last, you see, I have returned to my former plan of writing. I have done so, in despair of any other means, and because it is no longer possible for me to hold back. I have held back until I am tired out, worn out. I have been writing at this letter, from time to time, during the past fortnight. To-day is Friday, February 13th. I have much left to say. As soon as it is finished, I shall send it to you.” ***** “As soon as it is finished!” It was never finished. Events now supervened, which interrupted it, and prevented its completion. Those events, it will be my business, in the concluding chapters of this story, to relate. XX. WHEN Elias professed to recognize that, no matter how detestable his marriage might now have become to him, he was bound in all honor and decency to do nothing that could make his wife unhappy, he certainly, so far as he was conscious of his own intentions, meant what he said. Of his free will, he had married a perfectly innocent woman. He must not allow the burden of his guilt to bear in the slightest degree upon her shoulders. He must abide exactly by the letter, and, to the best of his ability, by the spirit, of his marriage vows. He purposed to do so; and, so far as he had fathomed it, his purpose was honest and earnest. Yet, at the same time, inevitably, his life at home galled and irked him more than a little. His daily association with Tillie, with Mrs. Morgenthau, and with the rabbi, was both irritating and enervating. He had constantly, as he put it, to wear a mask; to sham, to play a part, to act a lie. He had to counterfeit emotions and interests which he was very remote from feeling, and to conceal with utmost, unflagging vigilance those that actually dominated his heart. He had to pretend to be cheerful and sympathetic. He had to keep the one vital reality of his existence closely locked down, a secret prisoner in his breast. Shamming, through practiced in a laudable cause, is, as those who have tried it can testify, a sufficiently sorry and thankless business. Elias sickened of it. The never-relaxing guard that he was obliged to maintain over himself, on the perpetual _qui-vive_ lest by some momentary inadvertence he should betray himself, wearied and discouraged him. He became impatient, restive. In certain moods, he would reflect: “It is a part of my punishment. I have brought it upon myself. I deserve it. I must submit to it unrebelliously, in silence.” But Elias was not by temperament a Spartan; and more frequently, longing ardently for respite, he would cry: “If only for a little while I could escape! If only I could go away, and, in solitude, for a little while, give the rein to my own true self--live my own true life, without this eternal necessity of suppression and deceit!” The actor wanted to withdraw for a