Self-Humiliation

I had not the courage to enter my own dwelling! My heart sank
within me. It was as if the whole hope of a long life, an intense
desire, a keen unremitting pursuit, had suddenly been for ever
baffled. Let no one who has not been in my situation; who has not
been governed by like moral and social influences from the beginning;
who knows not my sensibilities, and the organization--singular and
strange it may be--of my mind and body; let no such person jump
to the conclusion that there was any thing unnatural, however
unreasonable and unreasoning, in the wild passion which possessed
me. I look back upon it with some surprise myself. The fears which
I felt, the sufferings I endured, however unreasonable, were yet
true to my training.

That training made me selfish; how selfish let
my blindness show! In the blindness of self I could see nothing but
the thing I feared, the one phantom--phantom though it were--which
was sufficient to quell and crush all the better part of man within
me, banish all the real blessings which were at command around
me. I gave but a single second glance through the windows of my
habitation, and then darted desperately away from the entrance! I
bounded, without a consciousness, through the now still and dreary
streets, and found myself, without intending it, once more beside the
river, whose constant melancholy chidings, seemed the echoes-though
in the faintest possible degree--of the deep waters of some
apprehensive sorrow then rolling through all the channels of my
soul.

What was it that I feared? What was it that I sought? Was it love?
Can it be that the strange passion which we call by this name, was
the source of that sad frenzy which filled and afflicted my heart?
And was I not successful in my love? Had I not found the sought?--won
the withheld? What was denied to me that I desired? I asked of
myself these questions. I asked them in vain. I could not answer
them. I believe that I can answer now. It was sincerity, earnestness,
devotion from her, all speaking through an intensity like that
which I felt within my own soul.