will towards you. My conscience does not constrain me to do more
than to wish you every happiness both as regards this and another
life."

Thus ended my secret connexion with that strange man. But who
knows; he was perhaps more exasperated by ill fortune, delirium, or
despair, than really bad at heart.



CHAPTER XLII.



I once more learnt to value solitude, and my days tracked each other
without any distinction or mark of change.

The summer was over; it was towards the close of September, and the
heat grew less oppressive; October came. I congratulated myself now
on occupying a chamber well adapted for winter. One morning,
however, the jailer made his appearance, with an order to change my
prison.

"And where am I to go?"

"Only a few steps, into a fresher chamber."

"But why not think of it when I was dying of suffocation; when the
air was filled with gnats, and my bed with bugs?"