To go forward was like
climbing a precipice with beetling crags and perpendicular walls of ice.
The first of these alternatives did not require any consideration
whatever. To the second I gave all the earnest consideration of which I
was capable, but I saw no way of getting up. The heights were
inaccessible.
In very truth, my case was a hard one. I could not make love to a woman
through a grating; and if I could, I would not be dishonorable enough to
do it, when that woman was locked up in a room, and could not get away
in case she did not wish to listen to my protestations. But between the
girl I loved and myself there was a grating compared with which the
barrier in the doorway of my study was as a spider's web. This was the
network of solemn bars which surrounded the sisters of the House of
Martha,--the vows they had made never to think of love, to read of it or
speak of it.
To drop metaphors, it would be impossible for me to continue to work
with her and conceal my love for her; it would be stupidly useless, and
moreover cowardly, to declare that love; and it would be sensible,
praiseworthy, and in every way advantageous for me to cease my literary
labors and go immediately to the Adirondacks or to Mount Desert.
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