I need not strive to declare what were my thoughts and feelings as
I wandered off from my dwelling and place of espionage that night.
No language of which I am possessed could embody to the idea of
the reader the thousandth part of what I suffered. An insane and
morbid resentment filled my heart. A close, heavy, hot stupor,
pressed upon my brain. My limbs seemed feeble as those of a child.
I tottered in the streets. The stars, bright mysterious watchers,
seemed peering down into my face with looks of smiling inquiry. The
sudden bark of a watch-dog startled and unnerved me. I felt with
the consciousness of a mean action, all the humiliating weakness
which belongs to it.
It took me a goodly hour before I could muster up courage to return
home, and it was then midnight. Julia had retired to her chamber,
but not yet to her couch. She flew to me on my entrance--to my
arms. I shrunk from her embraces; but she grasped me with greater
firmness. I had never witnessed so much warmth in her before. It
surprised me, but the solution of it was easy. My long stay had
made her apprehensive. It was so unusual. My coldness, when she
embraced me, was as startling to her, as her sudden warmth was
surprising to me. She pushed me from her--still, however, holding
me in her grasp, while she surveyed me. Then she started, and with
newer apprehensions.
Well she might. My looks alarmed her. My hair was dishevelled
and moist with the night-dews. My cheeks were very pale. There was
a quick, agitated, and dilating fullness of my eyes, which rolled
hastily about the apartment, never even resting upon her. They dared
not. I caught a hasty glance of myself in the mirror, and scarcely
knew my own features. It was natural enough that she should be
alarmed. She clung to me with increased fervency. She spoke hurriedly,
but clearly, with an increased and novel power of utterance, the
due result of her excitement. Could that excitement be occasioned
by love for me--by a suspicion of the truth, namely, that I had
been watching her? I shuddered as this last conjecture passed into
my mind. That, indeed, would be a humiliation--worse, more degrading,
by far, than all.
"Oh, why have you left me--so long, so very long? where have you
been? what has happened?"
"Nothing--nothing."
"Ah, but there is something, Edward. Speak! what is it, dear husband?
I see it in your eyes, your looks! Why do you turn from me? Look
on me! tell me! You are very pale, and your eyes are so wild, so
strange! You are sick, dear Edward; you are surely sick: tell me,
what has happened?"
Wild and hurried as they were, never did tones of more touching
sweetness fall from any lips. They unmanned--nay, I use the wrong
word--they MANNED me for the time. They brought me back to my senses,
to a conviction of her truth, to a momentary conviction of my own
folly. My words fell from me without effort--few, hurried, husky--but
it was a sudden heartgush, which was unrestrainable.