Why was this easiest, simplest work of self-culture always
too much for me? The explanation has been written already in the
three words that were many enough, and plain enough, for my
confession. I loved her.
The days passed, the weeks passed; it was approaching the third
month of my stay in Cumberland. The delicious monotony of life in
our calm seclusion flowed on with me, like a smooth stream with a
swimmer who glides down the current. All memory of the past, all
thought of the future, all sense of the falseness and hopelessness
of my own position, lay hushed within me into deceitful rest.
Lulled by the Syren-song that my own heart sung to me, with eyes
shut to all sight, and ears closed to all sound of danger, I
drifted nearer and nearer to the fatal rocks. The warning that
aroused me at last, and startled me into sudden, self-accusing
consciousness of my own weakness, was the plainest, the truest,
the kindest of all warnings, for it came silently from HER.
We had parted one night as usual. No word had fallen from my
lips, at that time or at any time before it, that could betray me,
or startle her into sudden knowledge of the truth. But when we
met again in the morning, a change had come over her--a change
that told me all.
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