We shall live thus separate and secure from each other; you will have
only cause to hope for my safety; and I shall have no reason to shudder
at yours. Through one channel alone could I then fear; namely, that in
dying, you should enjoy the fruitless vengeance of criminating me. But
this chance I must patiently endure: you, if older, are more robust and
hardy than myself--your life will probably be longer than mine; and, even
were it otherwise, why should we destroy one another? At my death-bed I
will solemnly swear to respect your secret; why not on your part, I say
not swear, but resolve, to respect mine? We cannot love one another; but
why hate with a gratuitous and demon vengeance? No, Houseman, however
circumstances may have darkened or steeled your heart, it is touched with
humanity yet--you will have owed to me the bread of a secure and easy
existence--you will feel that I have stripped myself, even to penury, to
purchase the comforts I cheerfully resign to you--you will remember that,
instead of the sacrifices enjoined by this alternative, I might have
sought only to counteract your threats, by attempting a life that you
strove to make a snare and torture to my own. You will remember this; and
you will not grudge me the austere and gloomy solitude in which I seek to
forget, or the one solace with which I, perhaps vainly, endeavour to
cheer my passage to a quiet grave. No, Houseman, no; dislike, hate,
menace me as you will, I still feel I shall have no cause to dread the
mere wantonness of your revenge."

These words, aided by a tone of voice, and an expression of countenance
that gave them perhaps their chief effect, took even the hardened nature
of Houseman by surprise; he was affected by an emotion which he could not
have believed it possible the man who till then had galled him by the
humbling sense of inferiority, could have created. He extended his hand
to Aram.