A merciless necessity
claims my future life. I must leave Thorpe Ambrose, I must leave
England, without hesitating, without stopping to look back.
There are reasons--terrible reasons, which I have madly trifled
with--for my never letting Mr. Armadale set eyes on me, or hear
of me again, after what has happened between us. I must go, never
more to live under the same roof, never more to breathe the same
air with that man. I must hide myself from him under an assumed
name; I must put the mountains and the seas between us. I have
been warned as no human creature was ever warned before.
I believe--I dare not tell you why--I believe that, if the
fascination you have for me draws me back to you, fatal
consequences will come of it to the man whose life has been so
strangely mingled with your life and mine--the man who was once
_your_ admirer and _my_ friend. And yet, feeling this, seeing it
in my mind as plainly as I see the sky above my head, there is
a weakness in me that still shrinks from the one imperative
sacrifice of never seeing you again. I am fighting with it as
a man fights with the strength of his despair. I have been near
enough, not an hour since, to see the house where you live, and
have forced myself away again out of sight of it.
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