Part One Paradise Lost Chapter 8 The Friend of the Women

I find it impossible to describe my sensations while the carriage was taking me to Major Fitz-David's house. I doubt, indeed, if I really felt or thought at all, in the true sense of those words.

From the moment when I had resigned myself into the hands of the chambermaid I seemed in some strange way to have lost my ordinary identity--to have stepped out of my own character. At other times my temperament was of the nervous and anxious sort, and my tendency was to exaggerate any difficulties that might place themselves in my way. At other times, having before me the prospect of a critical interview with a stranger, I should have considered with myself what it might be wise to pass over, and what it might be wise to say. Now I never gave my coming interview with the Major a thought; I felt an unreasoning confidence in myself, and a blind faith in him. Now neither the past nor the future troubled me; I lived unreflectingly in the present. I looked at the shops as we drove by them, and at the other carriages as they passed mine. I noticed--yes, and enjoyed--the glances of admiration which chance foot-passengers on the pavement cast on me. I said to myself, "This looks well for my prospect of making a friend of the Major!" When we drew up at the door in Vivian Place, it is no exaggeration to say that I had but one anxiety--anxiety to find the Major at home.