After an hour of affecting conversation, in which the happiness of a young and mutual attachment totally occupied their minds, and excluded every idea not in unison with delight, they returned to a sense of their present embarrassments. Adeline recollected that Theodore was arrested for disobedience of orders, and deserting his post; and Theodore, that he must shortly be torn away from Adeline, who would be left exposed to all the evils from which he had so lately rescued her. This thought overwhelmed his heart with anguish; and after a long pause he ventured to propose what his wishes had often suggested--a marriage with Adeline before he departed from the village: this was the only means of preventing, perhaps, an eternal separation; and though he saw the many dangerous inconveniences to which she would be exposed by a marriage with a man circumstanced like himself, yet these appeared so unequal to those she would otherwise be left to encounter alone, that his reason could no longer scruple to adopt what his affection had suggested. Adeline was for some time too much agitated to reply: and though she had little to oppose to the arguments and pleadings of Theodore; though she had no friends to control, and no contrariety of interests to perplex her, she could not bring herself to consent thus hastily to a marriage with a man of whom she had little knowledge, and to whose family and connexions she had no sort of introduction. At length she entreated he would drop the subject; and the conversation for the remainder of the day was more general, yet still interesting. That similarity of taste and opinion which had at first attracted them, every moment now more fully disclosed. Their discourse was enriched by elegant literature, and endeared by mutual regard. Adeline had enjoyed few opportunities of reading; but the books to which she had access, operating upon a mind eager for knowledge, and upon a taste peculiarly sensible of the beautiful and the elegant, had impressed all their excellences upon her understanding. Theodore had received from nature many of the qualities of genius, and from education, all that it could bestow; to these were added a noble independency of spirit, a feeling heart, and manners which partook of a happy mixture of dignity and sweetness.