the accumulated power of the expectations, dreams, and impatient
longings of a sterile life of eight-and-twenty years, passed in
watching and not seeing, in seeking and not finding, what some
presentiment taught me to expect, and you have revealed to me. But,
alas, I have known and loved you too late, if you understand love as
most men do, and as you seemed to comprehend it, when you spoke just
now, those light and profane words. Listen to me once more," she added,
"and understand me; I am yours, wholly yours. I belong to you as I do
to myself, and I may say so without wronging the adoptive father, who
never considered me but as a daughter. I am wholly yours, and of myself
I only keep back what you wish me to retain. Do not be surprised at
this language, which is not that of the women of Europe; they love and
are beloved tamely, and would fear to weaken the sentiments they
inspire by avowing a secret that they wish to have wrested from them. I
differ from them by my country, by my feelings, and by my education. I
have lived with a philosopher in the society of free-thinkers,
unshackled by the belief and observances of the religion they have
undermined, and have none of the superstitions, weaknesses and scruples
which make ordinary women bow before another judge than their
conscience. The God of their childhood is not my God. I believe in the
God who has written his symbol in Nature, his law in our hearts, his
morality in our reason. Reason, feeling and conscience are the only
Revelation in which I believe. Neither of these oracles of my life
forbid me to be yours, and the impulse of my whole soul would cast me
into your arms, if you could only be happy at that price. But shall you
or I place our happiness in a fugitive delirium of the senses, which
cannot give half the enjoyment that its voluntary renunciation would
afford our hearts? Shall we not more fully believe in the immateriality
and eternity of our love, if it remains, like a pure thought, in those
regions which are inaccessible to change and death, than if it were