June 20th.--Eight o'clock. The sun is shining in a clear sky. I have not been near my bed--I have not once closed my weary wakeful eyes. From the same window at which I looked out into the darkness of last night, I look out now at the bright stillness of the morning.

I count the hours that have passed since I escaped to the shelter of this room by my own sensations--and those hours seem like weeks.

How short a time, and yet how long to ME--since I sank down in the darkness, here, on the floor--drenched to the skin, cramped² in every limb, cold to the bones, a useless, helpless, panic-stricken creature.

I hardly know when I roused myself. I hardly know when I groped my way back to the bedroom, and lighted the candle, and searched (with a strange ignorance, at first, of where to look for them) for dry clothes to warm me. The doing of these things is in my mind, but not the time when they were done.

Can I even remember when the chilled, cramped feeling left me, and the throbbing³ heat came in its place?

Surely it was before the sun rose? Yes, I heard the clock strike three. I remember the time by the sudden brightness and clearness, the feverish⁴ strain and excitement of all my faculties⁵ which came with it. I remember my resolution to control myself, to wait patiently hour after hour, till the chance offered of removing Laura from this horrible place, without the danger of immediate⁶ discovery and pursuit. I remember the persuasion⁷ settling itself in my mind that the words those two men had said to each other would furnish us, not only with our justification⁸ for leaving the house, but with our weapons of defence against them as well. I recall the impulse that awakened⁹ in me to preserve those words in writing, exactly as they were spoken, while the time was my own, and while my memory