against me, but in strict justice all my ancestors for generations
should be made co-defendants and I be permitted to plead in
mitigation of punishment the imperious mandate of heredity. To a
mesalliance of that kind every globule of my ancestral blood spoke in
opposition. In brief, my tastes, habits, instinct, with whatever of
reason my love had left me--all fought against it. Moreover, I was
an irreclaimable sentimentalist, and found a subtle charm in an
impersonal and spiritual relation which acquaintance might vulgarize
and marriage would certainly dispel. No woman, I argued, is what
this lovely creature seems. Love is a delicious dream; why should I
bring about my own awakening?

"The course dictated by all this sense and sentiment was obvious.
Honor, pride, prudence, preservation of my ideals--all commanded me
to go away, but for that I was too weak. The utmost that I could do
by a mighty effort of will was to cease meeting the girl, and that I
did. I even avoided the chance encounters of the garden, leaving my
lodging only when I knew that she had gone to her music lessons, and
returning after nightfall. Yet all the while I was as one in a
trance, indulging the most fascinating fancies and ordering my entire
intellectual life in accordance with my dream. Ah, my friend, as one
whose actions have a traceable relation to reason, you cannot know
the fool's paradise in which I lived.

"One evening the devil put it into my head to be an unspeakable
idiot. By apparently careless and purposeless questioning I learned
from my gossipy landlady that the young woman's bedroom adjoined my
own, a party-wall between. Yielding to a sudden and coarse impulse I
gently rapped on the wall. There was no response, naturally, but I
was in no mood to accept a rebuke. A madness was upon me and I