I averted my face from hers, but without speaking. She threw her
arms around my neck.
"Do not turn away from me, Edward. Do not, do not, I entreat you!
You must not--no! not till you tell me what is troubling you--not
till I soothe you, and make you love me again as much as you did
at first."
When I turned to her again, the tears--hot, scalding tears--were
already streaming down my cheeks.
"Julia, God knows I love you! Never woman yet was more devotedly
loved by man! I love you too much--too deeply--too entirely! Alas,
I love nothing else!"
"Say not that you love me too much--that can not be! Do I not love
you--you only, you altogether? Should I not have your whole love
in return?"
"Ah, Julia! but my love is a convulsive eagerness of soul--a passion
that knows no limit! It is not that my heart is entirely yours:
it is that it is yours with a frenzied desperation. There is a
fanaticism in love as in religion. My love is that fanaticism. It
burns--it commands--where yours would but soothe and solicit."
"But is mine the less true--the less valuable for this, dear Edward?"
"No, perhaps not! It may be even more true, more valuable; it may
be only less intense. But fanaticism, you know, is exacting--nothing
more so. It permits no half-passion, no moderate zeal. It insists
upon devotion like its own. Ah, Julia, could you but love as I do!"
"I love you all, Edward, all that I can, and as it belongs in my
nature to love. But I am a woman, and a timid one, you know. I am
not capable of that wild passion which you feel. Were I to indulge
it, it would most certainly destroy me. Even as it sometimes appears
in you, it terrifies and unnerves me. You are so impetuous!"
"Ah, you would have only the meek, the amiable!"
And thus, with an implied sarcasm, our conversation ended. Julia
turned on me a look of imploring, which was naturally one of
reproach. It did not have its proper influence upon me. I seized
my hat, and hurried from the house. I rushed, rather than walked,
through the streets; and, before I knew where I was, I found myself
on the banks of the river, under the shade of trees, with the soft
evening breeze blowing upon me, and the placid moon sailing quietly
above. I threw myself down upon the grass, and delivered myself up
to gloomy thoughts. Here was I, then, scarcely twenty-five years
old; young, vigorous; with a probable chance of fortune before me;
a young and lovely wife, the very creature of my first and only
choice, one whom I tenderly loved, whom, if to seek again, I should
again, and again, and only, seek! Yet I was miserable--miserable
in the very possession of my first hopes, my best joys--the very
treasure that had always seemed the dearest in my sight. Miserable
blind heart! miserable indeed! For what was there to make me
miserable? Absolutely nothing--nothing that the outer world could
give--nothing that it could ever take away. But what fool is it
that fancies there must be a reason for one's wretchedness? The
reason is in our own hearts; in the perverseness which can make of
its own heaven a hell! not often fashion a heaven out of hell!