That "somebody was pleased" each time Beauty offered a wisdom I
accepted, became an unanswerable conviction I could not argue about;
but that the guidance--waking a responsive emotion in myself of
love--was referable to any particular name I could not, by any
stretch of desire or imagination, bring myself to believe.

Marion, I must emphasise, had been gone from me five years at least
before the new emotion gave the smallest hint of its new birth; and
my feeling, once the first keen shame and remorse subsided--I confess
to the dishonouring truth--was one of looking back upon a painful
problem that had found an unexpected solution. It was chiefly relief,
although a sad relief, I felt. . . . And with the absorbing work of the
next following years (I took up my appointment within six months of
her death) her memory, already swiftly fading, entered an oblivion
whence rarely, and at long intervals only, it emerged at all. In the
ordinary meaning of the phrase, I had forgotten her. You will see,
therefore, that there was no desire in me to revive an unhappy
memory, least of all to establish any fancied communication with one
before whose generous love I had felt myself dishonoured, if not
actually disgraced. Even the remorse and regret had long since failed
to disturb my peace of mind, causing me no anxiety, much less pain.
Sic transit was the epitaph, if any. Acute sensation I had none at
all. This, then, plainly argues against the slightest predisposition
on my part to imagine that the loving guidance so strangely given
owned a personal origin I could recognize. That it involved a
"personal emotion" is quite another matter.

The more remarkable, therefore, is the statement truth now compels me
to confess to you--namely, that this origin is recognizable, and that
I have traced in part the name it owns to. My next sentence you