Then, since you will shew no mercy, expect none.
Your menaces are vain, man! I tell you again I do not fear you! I will beg no pity from you—I dare endure more than you dare inflict!
I am not to be braved from my purpose! The basis of nature is not more unshaken! High as your courage is, you will find a spirit in me that can mount still higher!
Courage? Oh shame! Name it not! Where was your courage when you decoyed my defender from me? The man you durst not face?—Where is he?—What have you done with him?—Laura has given you my letter—Should your practices have reached his life!—But no! It cannot be! An act so very vile as that not even the errors of your mind could reach!—Courage?—Even me you durst not face in freedom! Your courage employed a band of ruffians against me, singly; a woman too, over whom your manly valour would tower! But there is no such mighty difference as prejudice supposes. Courage has neither sex nor form: it is an energy of mind, of which your base proceedings shew I have infinitely the most. This bids me stand firm, and meet your worst daring undauntedly! This be assured will make me the victor! I tell you, man, it places me above you!
Urge me no more!—Beware of me! You have driven me mad! Do not tempt a desperate man! Resistance will be destruction to you, no matter that to me it be perdition! My account is closed, and I am reconciled to ruin!—You shall be mine!—Though hell gape for me you shall be mine!—Once more beware! I warn you not to contend!
Why, man, what would you do? Is murder your intent?—While I have life I fear you not!—And think you that brutality can taint the dead? Nay, think you that, were you endowed with the superior force which the vain name of man supposes, and could accomplish the basest purpose of your heart, I would falsely take guilt to myself; or imagine I had received the smallest blemish, from impurity which never reached my mind? That I would lament, or shun the world, or walk in open day oppressed by shame I did not merit? No!—For you perhaps I might weep, but for myself I would not shed a tear! Not a tear!—You cannot injure me—I am above you!—If you mean to deal me blows or death, here I stand ready to suffer: but till I am dead, or senseless, I defy you to do me harm!—Bethink you, Clifton! I see the struggles of your soul: there is virtue among them. Your eye speaks the reluctance of your hand. Your heart spurns at the mischief your passions would perpetrate!—Remember—Unless you have recourse to some malignant, some cruel, some abominable means, you never shall accomplish so base a purpose!—But you cannot be so guilty, Clifton!—You cannot!—I know not by what perverse fatality you have been misled, for you have a mind fitted for the sublimest emanations of virtue!—No, you cannot!—There is something within you that lays too strong a hand upon you! Malice so black is beyond you! Your very soul abhors its own guilt, and is therefore driven frantic!—Oh, Clifton! You that were born to be the champion of truth, the instructor of error, and the glory of the earth!—My heart yearns over you—Awake!—Rise!—Be a man!
Divine, angelic creature!—Fool, madman, villain!
With these exclamations I instantly burst from the chamber—Conviction, astonishment, remorse, tenderness, all the passions that could subdue the human soul rushed upon me, till I could support no more.
Of all the creatures God ever formed she is the most wonderful!—I have repeated something like her words; but had you seen her gestures, her countenance, her eye, her glowing indignant fortitude at one moment, and her kindling comprehensive benevolence the next, like me you would have felt an irresistible impulse to catch some spark of a flame so heavenly!
And now what is to be done? I am torn by contending passions!—If I release her there is an end to all; except to my disgrace, which will be everlasting—Give her to the arms of Henley?—I cannot bear it, Fairfax!—I cannot bear it!—Death, racks, infamy itself to such a thought were infinitude of bliss!