and though I am now compelled to wear the form of Almoran, whose vices are this moment disgracing mine, yet in the balance I shall be weighed as Hamet, and I shall suffer only as I am found wanting.'
Almeida, whose mind was now in a tumult that bordered upon distraction, bewildered in a labyrinth of doubt and wonder, and alike dreading the consequence of what she heard, whether it was false or true, was yet impatient to confute or confirm it; and as soon as she had recovered her speech, urged him for some token of the prodigy he asserted, which he might easily have given, by relating any of the incidents which themselves only could know. But just at this moment, Almoran,
having at last disengaged himself from Osmyn, by whom he had been long detained, resumed his own figure: and while the eyes of Almeida were fixed upon Hamet, his powers were suddenly taken from him, and restored in an instant; and she beheld the features of Almoran vanish, and gazed with astonishment upon his own: 'Thy features change!' said she, 'and thou indeed art Hamet.' 'The sudden trance,' said he, 'has restored me to myself; and from my wrongs where shalt thou be hidden?' This reproach was more than she could sustain, but he caught her as she was falling, and supported her in his arms. This incident renewed in a moment all the tenderness of his love: while he beheld her distress, and pressed her by
the embrace that sustained her to his bosom, he forgot every injury which he supposed she had done him; and perceived her recover with a pleasure, that for a moment suspended the sense of his misfortunes.
Her first reflection was upon the snare, in which she had been taken; and her first sensation was joy that she had escaped: she saw at once the whole complication of events that had deceived and distressed her; and nothing more was now necessary, than to explain them to Hamet; which, however, she could not do, without discovering the insincerity of her answers to the enquiries which he had made, while she mistook him for his brother: 'If in my heart,' says she, 'thou hast
found any virtue, let it incline thee to pity the vice that is mingled with it: by the vice I have been ensnared, but I have been delivered by the virtue. Almoran, for now I know that it was not thee, Almoran, when he possessed thy form, was with me: he prophaned thy love, by attempts to supplant my virtue; I resisted his importunity, and escaped perdition; but the guilt of Almoran drew my resentment upon Hamet. I thought the vices which, under thy form, I discovered in his bosom, were thine; and in the anguish of grief, indignation, and disappointment, my heart renounced thee: yet, as I could not give thee up to death, I could not discover to Almoran the attempt which I imputed
to thee; when you questioned me, therefore, as Almoran, I was betrayed to dissimulation, by the tenderness which still melted my heart for Hamet.' 'I believe thee,' said Hamet, catching her in a transport to his breast: 'I love thee for thy virtue; and may the pure and exalted beings, who are superior to the passions that now throb in my heart, forgive me, if I love thee also for thy fault. Yet, let the danger to which it betrayed thee, teach us still to walk in the strait path, and commit the keeping of our peace to the Almighty; for he that wanders in the maze of falsehood, shall pass by the good that he would meet, and shall meet the evil that he would shun. I also was tempted; but I was strengthened
to resist: if I had used the power, which I derived from the arts that have been practised against me, to return evil for evil; if I had not disdained a secret and unavowed revenge, and the unhallowed pleasures of a brutal appetite; I might have possessed thee in the form of Almoran, and have wronged irreparably myself and thee: for how could I have been admitted, as Hamet, to the beauties which I had enjoyed as Almoran? and how couldst thou have given, to Almoran, what in reality had been appropriated by Hamet?'