Read "The Gates Between" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
But no. Alas, no, no! I was and was not free. All my soul turned toward her, but something stronger than my soul constrained me. It seemed to me that I longed for her with such longing as might have killed a live man, or might have made a dead one live again. This emotion added much to my suffering, but nothing to my power to turn one footstep toward her or to lift my helpless face in her direction. It was not permitted to me. It was not willed.
Now this, which might in another temperament have produced a sense of fear or of desire to placate the unknown Force which overruled me, created in me at first a stinging rage. This is the truth, and the truth I tell.