Almeida they were supposed to be the emotions of Hamet, she imputed to a different cause: 'As Heaven,' says she, 'has preserved thee from death; so has it, for thy sake, preserved me from violation.' Almoran, whose passion had in this interval again surmounted his remorse, gazed eagerly upon her, and catching her to his bosom; 'Let us at least,' says he, 'secure the happiness that is now offered; let not these inestimable moments pass by us unimproved; but to shew that we deserve them, let them be devoted to love.' 'Let us then,' said Almeida, 'escape together.' 'To escape with thee,' said: Almoran, 'is impossible. I shall retire, and, like the shaft of Arabia, leave no mark behind, me; but the
flight of Almeida will at once be traced to him by whom I was admitted, and I shall thus retaliate his friendship with destruction.' 'Let him then,' said Almeida, 'be the partner of our flight.' 'Urge it not now,' said Almoran; 'but trust to my prudence and my love, to select some hour that will be more favourable to our purpose. And yet,' said he, 'even then, we shall, as now, sigh in vain for the completion of our wishes: by whom shall our hands be joined, when in the opinion of the priests it has been forbidden from above?' 'Save thyself then,' said Almeida, and leave me to my fate.' 'Not so,' said Almoran. 'What else,' replied Almeida, 'is in our power?' 'It is in our power,' said
Almoran, 'to seize that joy, to which a public form can give us no new claim; for the public form can only declare that right by which I claim it now.'
As they were now reclining upon a sofa, he threw his arm round her; but she suddenly sprung up, and burst from him: the tear started to her eye, and she gazed upon him with an earnest but yet tender look: 'Is it?' says she—'No sure, it is not the voice of Hamet!' 'O! yes,' said Almoran, 'what other voice should call thee to cancel at once the wrongs of Hamet and Almeida; to secure the treasures of thy love from the hand of the robber; to hide, the joys, which if now we lose we may lose for ever, in the
sacred and inviolable stores of the past, and place them beyond the power not of Almoran only but of fate?' With this wild effusion of desire, he caught her again to his breast, and finding no resistance his heart exulted in his success; but the next moment, to the total disappointment of his hopes, he perceived that she had fainted in his arms. When she recovered, she once more disengaged herself from him, and turning away her face, she burst into tears. When her voice could be heard, she covered herself with her veil, and turning again towards him, 'All but this,' said she, 'I had learnt to bear; and how has this been deserved by Almeida of Hamet? You was my only solace in distress; and when the tears have stolen from my eyes in silence
and in solitude, I thought on thee; I thought upon the chaste ardour of thy sacred friendship, which was softened, refined, and exalted into love. This was my hoarded treasure; and the thoughts of possessing this; soothed all my anguish with a miser's happiness, who, blest in the consciousness of hidden wealth, despises cold and hunger, and rejoices in the midst of all the miseries that make poverty dreadful: this was my last retreat; but I am now desolate and forlorn, and my soul looks round, with terror, for that refuge which it can never find.' 'Find that refuge,' said Almoran, 'in me.' 'Alas!' said Almeida, 'can he afford me refuge from my sorrows, who, for the guilty pleasures of a transient moment,
would forever sully the purity of my mind, and aggravate misfortune by the consciousness of guilt?'
As Almoran now perceived, that it was impossible, by any importunity, to induce her to violate her principles; he had nothing more to attempt, but to subvert them. 'When,' said he, 'shall Almeida awake, and these dreams of folly and superstition vanish? That only is virtue, by which happiness is produced; and whatever produces happiness, is therefore virtue; and the forms, and words and rites, which priests have pretended to be required by Heaven, are the fraudful arts only by which they govern mankind.'
Almeida, by this impious insult, was roused from grief to indignation: 'As thou hast now dared,' said she, 'to deride the laws, which thou wouldst first have broken; so hast thou broken for ever the tender bonds, by which my soul was united to thine. Such as I fondly believed thee, thou art not; and what thou art, I have never loved. I have loved a delusive phantom only, which, while I strove to grasp it, has vanished from me.' Almoran attempted to reply; but on such a subject, neither her virtue nor her wisdom would permit debate. 'That prodigy,' said she, 'which I thought was the sleight of cunning, or the work of sorcery, I now revere as the voice of Heaven; which, as it knew thy heart,
has in mercy saved me from thy arms. To the will of Heaven shall my will be obedient; and my voice also shall pronounce, to Almoran Almeida.'