Book IV - Page 2

Janet, I'm afraid it won't do. If you go off to weird
old churches, and fill yourself up with a fresh supply of horrors, I
don't know what will happen. You'll be dreaming dreadful things
about me every night and neither you nor I shall get any sleep." It
went to my heart to oppose her in any wish; and also this kind of
chaffy opposition might pain her. But I had no alternative; the
matter was too serious to be allowed to proceed. Should Aunt Janet
go to the church, she would surely want to visit the crypt. Should
she do so, and there notice the glass-covered tomb--as she could not
help doing--the Lord only knew what would happen. She had already
Second-Sighted a woman being married to me, and before I myself knew
that I had such a hope. What might she not reveal did she know where
the woman came from? It may have been that her power of Second Sight
had to rest on some basis of knowledge or belief, and that her vision
was but some intuitive perception of my own subjective thought. But
whatever it was it should be stopped--at all hazards.

This whole episode set me thinking introspectively, and led me
gradually but imperatively to self-analysis--not of powers, but of
motives. I found myself before long examining myself as to what were
my real intentions. I thought at first that this intellectual
process was an exercise of pure reason; but soon discarded this as
inadequate--even impossible. Reason is a cold manifestation; this
feeling which swayed and dominated me is none other than passion,
which is quick, hot, and insistent.

As for myself, the self-analysis could lead to but one result--the
expression to myself of the reality and definiteness of an already-
formed though unconscious intention. I wished to do the woman good--
to serve her in some way--to secure her some benefit by any means, no
matter how difficult, which might be within my power. I knew that I
loved her--loved her most truly and fervently; there was no need for
self-analysis to tell me that. And, moreover, no self-analysis, or
any other mental process that I knew of, could help my one doubt:
whether she was an ordinary woman (or an extraordinary woman, for the
matter of that) in some sore and terrible straits; or else one who
lay under some dreadful condition, only partially alive, and not
mistress of herself or her acts. Whichever her condition might be,
there was in my own feeling a superfluity of affection for her. The
self-analysis taught me one thing, at any rate--that I had for her,
to start with, an infinite pity which had softened towards her my
whole being, and had already mastered merely selfish desire. Out of
it I began to find excuses for her every act. In the doing so I knew
now, though perhaps I did not at the