While her mind was in this state of agitation and distress, she perceived the door open, and the next moment Almoran entered the apartment. When she saw him, she turned from him with a look of unutterable anguish; and hiding her face in her veil, she burst into tears. The tyrant was moved with her distress; for unfeeling obduracy is the vice only of the old, whose sensibility has been worn away by the habitual perpetration of reiterated wrongs.
He approached her with looks of kindness, and his voice was involuntarily modulated to pity; she was, however, too much absorbed in her own sorrows, to reply. He gazed upon her with tenderness and admiration;
and taking her hand into his own, he pressed it ardently to his bosom: his compassion soon kindled into desire, and from soothing her distress, he began to solicit her love. This instantly roused her attention, and resentment now suspended her grief: she turned from him with a firm and haughty step, and instead of answering his professions, reproached him with her wrongs. Almoran, that he might at once address her virtue and her passions, observed, that though he had loved her from the first moment he had seen her, yet he had concealed his passion even from her, till it had received the sanction of an invisible and superior power; that he came, therefore, the messenger of heaven; and that he offered her unrivalled empire and everlasting
love. To this she answered only by an impatient and fond enquiry after Hamet. 'Think not of Hamet,' said Almoran; 'for why should he who is rejected of Heaven, be still the favorite of Almeida?' 'If thy hand,' said Almeida, 'could quench in everlasting darkness, that vital spark of intellectual fire, which the word of the Almighty has kindled in my breast to burn for ever, then might Almeida cease to think of Hamet; but while that shall live, whatever form it shall inhabit, or in whatever world it shall reside, his image shall be for ever present, and to him shall my love be for ever true.' This glowing declaration of her love for Hamet, was immediately succeeded by a tender anxiety for his safety; and a sudden
reflection upon the probability of his death, and the danger of his situation if alive, threw her again into tears.
Almoran, whom the ardour and impetuosity of her passions kept sometimes silent, and sometimes threw into confusion, again attempted to sooth and comfort her: she often urged him to tell her what was become of his brother, and he as often evaded the question. As she was about to renew her enquiry, and reflected that it had already been often made, and had not yet been answered, she thought that Almoran had already put him to death: this threw her into a new agony, of which he did not immediately discover the cause; but as he soon learned it from
her reproaches and exclamations, he perceived that he could not hope to be heard, while she was in doubt about the safety of Hamet. In order, therefore, to sooth her mind, and prevent its being longer possessed with an image that excluded every other; he assumed a look of concern and astonishment at the imputation of a crime, which was at once so horrid and so unnecessary. After a solemn deprecation of such enormous guilt, he observed, that as it was now impossible for Hamet to succeed as his rival, either in empire or in love, without the breach of a command, which he knew his virtue would implicitly obey; he had no motive either to desire his death, or to restrain his liberty: 'His walk' says he, 'is still uncircumscribed in
Persia, and except this chamber, there is no part of the palace to which he is not admitted.'
To this declaration Almeida listened, as to the music of paradise; and it suspended for a-while every passion, but her love: the sudden ease of her mind made her regardless of all about her, and she had in this interval suffered Almoran to remove her veil, without reflecting upon what he was doing. The moment she recollected herself, she made a gentle effort to recover it, with some confusion, but without anger. The pleasure that was expressed in her eyes, the blush that glowed upon her cheek, and the contest about the veil, which to an amorous imagination had an air of dalliance, concurred
to heighten the passion of Almoran almost to phrensy: she perceived her danger in his looks, and her spirits instantly took the alarm. He seized her hand, and gazing ardently upon her, he conjured her, with a tone and emphasis that strongly expressed the tumultuous vehemence of his wishes, that she would renounce the rites which had been forbidden above, and that she would receive him to whom by miracle she had been alloted.