A. W. ST. IVES
END OF VOLUME IV
VOLUME V
LETTER LXXX
Coke Clifton to Guy Fairfax
London, Dover-Street
Before you proceed with my letter, Fairfax, read the inclosed paper![1]—Read!—The hand-writing is hers!—It is addressed to me! Was repeated to me! Is transcribed for me!—Transcribed by herself!—Read! And if it be possible believe in your own existence! Believe if you can that all you see, all you hear, the images that swim before your eyes and the world itself are real, and no delusion!—For my part I begin to doubt!—Read!—Oh that I were invisible and standing by your side!
[Footnote 1: A copy given by Anna to Clifton, as she had promised him, of all that she had said in her last conversation.]
Well!—Have you ended?—And do you still continue to breathe?—Are you not a statue?—Would not the whole universe denounce me liar if, knowing me, I were to tell it that words like these were not only spoken to me but are written, lest I should forget the maddening injuries they contain?—What! Make me her confessor?—Me?—No secret sin, of thought, word, or deed, concealed!—All remembered, all recited, all avowed!—Sins committed with the hated Henley!—Sins against love, against Clifton!—Does she imagine I can look on a paper like this and, while my eye shoots along the daring the insulting line, not feel all the fires that now devour me?—Surely she is frantic!
These things, Fairfax, are above my comprehension! My I amazement must be eternal, for I never shall be able to understand them.—What! Tell me, Clifton, of her amorous debates with such a fellow? Appoint him her head-usher over me? Announce him my rival? Meet my eye unabashed and affirm him to be my superior? Inform me of the deep hold he has taken of her heart? Own she kissed him?