It began to be a noticeable fact that their magnetic power over me was such that they could cast me down to the borders of despair, and raise me thence to rapture at will. Thus a few moments of such ordinary blandishments as the following were the only apparent means of raising my usually slow-moving spirits from a very low to a very high pitch. I was complaining of the waste of paper, in writing words of letters three or four inches high; did not think any law, even a law of nature, justified the imposition of such an expenditure upon a spouse in a separate sphere. 'She' promised to tone down the expressions of attachment until she could talk as largely as she pleased; and to some further suggestions, replied:
'Really, you are quite impertinent, considering the short time we have been married.' ...
Slightly singular as it may seem to those who think that this narration is 'all gammon,' I had gone through the usual course of acquaintanceship with this airy nothing; was first distant and reserved; then slightly thawed, though still horrified at the thought of having all my thoughts read; and finally, after I felt that the invisible eyes had read, in my memory, every page of my history, was perfectly familiar and at ease in the presence this finite searcher of hearts.
I find, next in order, the following:
'So you wish me to prove that we were married, do you? Well, when you become a denizen of this higher, but none the less practical sphere, you may read, if you please, where, with wonder and strange emotion, I read, in the heavenly records of marriages.' ... [It was dated about the time of my birth.] 'Your banter is not so agreeable as your tenderness.' ... 'You are incorrigible. It will take me many a long age to bring you to a due sense of my importance,' etc. 'Some of my friends are beside themselves with mirth, at my vain attempts at taming a spirit so rude.' Then came another promise of opened vision. 'A truly solemn scene is at hand. Spend the interval in prayer.'
But again there was something wrong about the spiritual zinc or acid, and the electrical machinery would not work. The fair or foul deceiver (who knows?) came up very solemn after this failure.
''Though all men forsake thee,' said Peter, 'yet will not I forsake thee.' So now, when the highest spirits of heaven have fled in terror and dismay, your poor darling will not forsake you. Well might I sit, like Job's friends, seven days, ay, seventy times seven, in silent contemplation of him who—woe is me!—fears that I am but another Delilah, commissioned by his enemies to betray him into their hands. What can I say? what do? Oh that I had never seen the glorious light of the sun or the pure myriads of my happy home, rather than I should have beheld that sight last night. How can I explain the fact that he, whom I, at least, believe to be heaven's most supreme (string of adjectives) favorite, is sitting here with his unutterable but unrepining sorrow looking forth from his ... eyes.'
Just here I caught a glimpse of my divinity, and turning in wrath and scorn to my Titania, said, mockingly:
"While I thine amiable cheeks do coy!"
To this she replies: 'Do not heap additional reproaches upon me, by any such awfully ludicrous quotations.' ... 'So you think that your Delilah is striving to gain time by all these pious and otherwise interesting remarks?' ... 'Nay, do not with loathing cast me from you as an an unholy and hateful thing! for then, oh, what I should then do or be, I cannot, dare not even think.' ... 'Again you see my woman's heart cannot suppress its emotions toward one who still hopes that he has been talking with ——; and who says that, for him to be convinced of this, is to be convinced that she who has been talking with him has not intentionally deceived him.'