conscience, that I should not return the day after!

While, throughout the hours of the night, I was thus vainly striving
to hold calm counsel with myself; the base thought never occurred to
me, which might have occurred to some other men, in my position: Why
marry the girl, because I love her? Why, with my money, my station, my
opportunities, obstinately connect love and marriage as one idea; and
make a dilemma and a danger where neither need exist? Had such a
thought as this, in the faintest, the most shadowy form, crossed my
mind, I should have shrunk from it, have shrunk from my self; with
horror. Whatever fresh degradations may be yet in store for me, this
one consoling and sanctifying remembrance must still be mine. My love
for Margaret Sherwin was worthy to be offered to the purest and
perfectest woman that ever God created.

The night advanced--the noises faintly reaching me from the streets,
sank and ceased--my lamp flickered and went out--I heard the carriage
return with Clara from the ball--the first cold clouds of day rose and
hid the waning orb of the moon--the air was cooled with its morning
freshness: the earth was purified with its morning dew--and still I
sat by my open window, striving with my burning love-thoughts of
Margaret; striving to think collectedly and usefully--abandoned to a
struggle ever renewing, yet never changing; and always hour after
hour, a struggle in vain.

At last I began to think less and less distinctly--a few moments more,
and I sank into a restless, feverish slumber. Then began another, and
a more perilous ordeal for me--the ordeal of dreams. Thoughts and
sensations which had been more and more weakly restrained with each
succeeding hour of wakefulness, now rioted within me in perfect