“Do not think that I would intrude upon your confidence:  I only ask your patience.  Do not for ever look sorrow and never speak it; utter one word of bitter complaint and I will reprove it with gentle exhortation and pour on you the balm of compassion.  You must not shut me from all communion with you:  do not tell me why you grieve but only say the words, “I am unhappy,” and you will feel relieved as if for some time excluded from all intercourse by some magic spell you should suddenly enter again the pale of human sympathy.  I entreat you to believe in my most sincere professions and to treat me as an old and tried friend:  promise me never to forget me, never causelessly to banish me; but try to love me as one who would devote all his energies to make you happy.  Give me the name of friend; I will fulfill its duties; and if for a moment complaint and sorrow would shape themselves into words let me be near to speak peace to your vext soul.”

I repeat his persuasions in faint terms and cannot give you at the same time the tone and gesture that animated them.  Like a refreshing shower on an arid soil they revived me, and although I still kept their cause secret he led me to pour forth my bitter complaints and to clothe my woe in words of gall and fire.  With all the energy of desperate grief I told him how I had fallen at once from bliss to misery; how that for me there was no joy, no hope; that death however bitter would be the welcome seal to all my pangs; death the skeleton was to be beautiful as love.  I know not why but I found it sweet to utter these words to human ears; and though I derided all consolation yet I was pleased to see it offered me with gentleness and kindness.  I listened quietly, and when he paused would again pour out my misery in expressions that shewed how far too deep my wounds were for any cure.

But now also I began to reap the fruits of my perfect solitude.  I had become unfit for any intercourse, even with Woodville the most gentle and sympathizing creature that existed.  I had become captious and unreasonable:  my temper was utterly spoilt.  I called him my friend but I viewed all he did with jealous eyes.  If he did not visit me at the appointed hour I was angry, very angry, and told him that if indeed he did feel interest in me it was cold, and could not be fitted for me, a poor worn creature, whose deep unhappiness demanded much more than his worldly heart could give.  When for a moment I imagined that his manner was cold I would fretfully say to him—­“I was at peace before you came; why have you disturbed me?  You have given me new wants and now your trifle with me as if my heart were as whole as yours, as if I were not in truth a shorn lamb thrust out on the bleak hill side, tortured by every blast.  I wished for no friend, no sympathy[.] I avoided you, you know I did, but you forced yourself upon me and gave me those wants which you see with triump[h] give you power over me.  Oh the brave power of the bitter north wind which freezes the tears it has caused to shed!  But I will not bear this; go:  the sun will rise and set as before you came, and I shall sit among the pines or wander on the heath weeping and complaining without wishing for you to listen.  You are cruel, very cruel, to treat me who bleed at every pore in this rough manner."[61]