terview) never to speak of her to me. Why I hoarded up this last
wretched little rag of the robe of hope that was rent and given to
the winds, how do I know! Why did you who read this, commit
that not dissimilar inconsistency of your own, last year, last month,
last week?

It was an unhappy life that I lived, and its one dominant anxie-
ty, towering over all its other anxieties like a high mountain above
a range of mountains, never disappeared from my view. Still, no
new cause for fear arose. Let me start from my bed as I would,
with the terror fresh upon me that he was discovered; let me sit
listening as I would, with dread for Herbert's returning step at
night, lest it should be fleeter than ordinary, and winged with evil
news; for all that, and much more to like purpose, the round of
things went on. Condemned to inaction and a state of constant
restlessness and suspense, I rowed about in my boat, and waited,
waited, waited as I best could.

There were states of the tide when, having been down the river,
I could not get back through the eddy-chafed arches and starlings
of Old London Bridge; then, I left my boat at a wharf near the
Custom House, to be brought up afterwards to the Temple stairs.
I was not averse to doing this, as it served to make me and my
boat a commoner incident among the waterside people there. From
this slight occasion, sprang two meetings that I have now to tell
of.

One afternoon, late in the month of February, I came ashore at
the wharf at dusk. I had pulled down as far as Greenwich with the
ebb tide, and had turned with the tide. It had been a fine bright
day, but had become foggy as the sun dropped, and I had had to
feel my way back among the shipping pretty carefully. Both in go-
ing and returning, I had seen the signal in his window, All well.

As it was a raw evening and I was cold, I thought I would com-
fort myself with dinner at once; and as I had hours of dejection
and solitude before me if I went home to the Temple, I thought I
would afterwards go to the play. The theatre where Mr. Wopsle
had achieved his questionable triumph, was in that waterside
neighbourhood (it is nowhere now), and to that theatre I resolved
to go. I was aware that Mr. Wopsle had not succeeded in reviving

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