had the barbarity to exact a promise, to exact an oath from her, not to write to me, not to send me a word, a hint, about herself?  Very likely she has.  It is only natural; and yet to me it is monstrous, it is horrible.  If she loves me—­as I think, as I know that she does—­why does she not resolve, why does she not venture to fly to me, and throw herself into my arms?  I often think she ought to do it; and she could do it.  If I ever hear a noise in the hall, I look toward the door.  It must be her—­she is coming—­I look up to see her.  Alas! because the possible is impossible, I let myself imagine that the impossible must become possible.  At night, when I lie awake, and the lamp flings an uncertain light about the room, her form, her spirit, a sense of her presence, sweeps over me, approaches me, seizes me.  It is but for a moment; it is that I may have an assurance that she is thinking of me, that she is mine.  Only one pleasure remains to me.  When I was with her I never dreamt of her; now when I am far away, and, oddly enough, since I have made the acquaintance of other attractive persons in this neighborhood, for the first time her figure appears to me in my dreams, as if she would say to me, ’Look on them, and on me.  You will find none more beautiful, more lovely than I.’  And so she is present in every dream I have.  In whatever happens to me with her, we are woven in and in together.  Now we are subscribing a contract together.  There is her hand, and there is mine; there is her name, and there is mine; and they move one into the other, and seem to devour each other.  Sometimes she does something which injures the pure idea which I have of her; and then I feel how intensely I love her, by the indescribable anguish which it causes me.  Again, unlike herself, she will rally and vex me; and then at once the figure changes—­her sweet, round, heavenly face draws out; it is not she, it is another; but I lie vexed, dissatisfied and wretched.  Laugh not, dear Mittler, or laugh on as you will.  I am not ashamed of this attachment, of this—­if you please to call it so—­foolish, frantic passion.  No, I never loved before.  It is only now that I know what to love means.  Till now, what I have called life was nothing but its prelude—­amusement, sport to kill the time with.  I never lived till I knew her, till I loved her—­entirely and only loved her.  People have often said of me, not to my face, but behind my back, that in most things I was but a botcher and a bungler.  It may be so; for I had not then found in what I could show myself a master.  I should like to see the man who outdoes me in the talent of love.  A miserable life it is, full of anguish and tears; but it is so natural, so dear to me, that I could hardly change it for another.”

Edward had relieved himself slightly by this violent unloading of his heart.  But in doing so every feature of his strange condition had been brought out so clearly before his eyes that, overpowered by the pain of the struggle, he burst into tears, which flowed all the more freely as his heart had been made weak by telling it all.