sight of this new maid, because her advent had been announced to me at a
moment to which I could not cease to attach some fatality: I had a vague
dread that I should find her mixed up with the dreary drama of my
life--that some new sickening vision would reveal her to me as an evil
genius. When at last I did unavoidably meet her, the vague dread was
changed into definite disgust. She was a tall, wiry, dark-eyed woman,
this Mrs. Archer, with a face handsome enough to give her coarse hard
nature the odious finish of bold, self-confident coquetry. That was
enough to make me avoid her, quite apart from the contemptuous feeling
with which she contemplated me. I seldom saw her; but I perceived that
she rapidly became a favourite with her mistress, and, after the lapse of
eight or nine months, I began to be aware that there had arisen in
Bertha's mind towards this woman a mingled feeling of fear and
dependence, and that this feeling was associated with ill-defined images
of candle-light scenes in her dressing-room, and the locking-up of
something in Bertha's cabinet. My interviews with my wife had become so
brief and so rarely solitary, that I had no opportunity of perceiving
these images in her mind with more definiteness. The recollections of
the past become contracted in the rapidity of thought till they sometimes
bear hardly a more distinct resemblance to the external reality than the
forms of an oriental alphabet to the objects that suggested them.

Besides, for the last year or more a modification had been going forward
in my mental condition, and was growing more and more marked. My insight
into the minds of those around me was becoming dimmer and more fitful,
and the ideas that crowded my double consciousness became less and less
dependent on any personal contact. All that was personal in me seemed to
be suffering a gradual death, so that I was losing the organ through
which the personal agitations and projects of others could affect me. But
along with this relief from wearisome insight, there was a new