How could I best crush the desire to see her, to speak to her, on the morrow?  Should I leave London, leave England, fly from the temptation, no matter where, or at what sacrifice?  Or should I take refuge in my books—­the calm, changeless old friends of my earliest fireside hours?  Had I resolution enough to wear my heart out by hard, serious, slaving study?  If I left London on the morrow, could I feel secure, in my own 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 liberation from all control.

This is what I dreamed: 

I stood on a wide plain.  On one side, it was bounded by thick woods, whose dark secret depths looked unfathomable to the eye:  on the other, by hills, ever rising higher and higher yet, until they were lost in bright, beautifully white clouds, gleaming in refulgent sunlight.  On the side above the woods, the sky was dark and vaporous.  It seemed as if some thick exhalation had arisen from beneath the trees, and overspread the clear firmament throughout this portion of the scene.

As I still stood on the plain and looked around, I saw a woman coming towards me from the wood.  Her stature was tall; her black hair flowed about her unconfined; her robe was of the dun hue of the vapour and mist which hung above the trees, and fell to her feet in dark thick folds.  She came on towards me swiftly and softly, passing over the ground like cloud-shadows over the ripe corn-field or the calm water.