'No, Harleigh! your noble, liberal nature answers it in every word, in every look! You accord, then,--you conceive, at least, all that constitutes my defence, in allowing me the use of my faculties; for how better can I employ them than in doing honour to excellence? Why, for so many centuries, has man, alone, been supposed to possess, not only force and power for action and defence, but even all the rights of taste; all the fine sensibilities which impel our happiest sympathies, in the choice of our life's partners? Why, not alone, is woman to be excluded from the exertions of courage, the field of glory, the immortal death of honour,--not alone to be denied deliberating upon the safety of the state of which she is a member, and the utility of the laws by which she must be governed:--must even her heart be circumscribed by boundaries as narrow as her sphere of action in life? Must she be taught to subdue all its native emotions? To hide them as sin, and to deny them as shame? Must her affections be bestowed but as the recompence of flattery received; not of merit discriminated? Must every thing that she does be prescribed by rule? Must everything that she says, be limited to what has been said before? Must nothing that is spontaneous, generous, intuitive, spring from her soul to her lips?--And do you, even you, Harleigh, despise unbidden love!' 'No, Elinor, no!--if I durst tell you what I think of it--' He stopt, embarrassed. 'I understand you, Harleigh; you know not how to find expressions that may not wound me? Well! let me not pain you. Let us hasten to conclude. I have spoken all that I am now capable to utter of my defence; nothing more remains but the boon I have to beg. Harleigh!--if there be a question you can resolve me, that may mitigate the horrour of my destiny, without diminishing its glory--for glory and horrour go hand in hand! would you refuse me--when I solicit it as a boon?--would you refuse, Harleigh, to satisfy me, even though my demand should be perplexing? could you, Harleigh, refuse me?--And at such a moment as this?' 'No, certainly not!' 'Tell me, then, and fear not to be sincere. Is it to some other attachment--' a sort of shivering fit stopt her for a moment, but she recovered from it by a pride that seemed to burn through every vein, as she added, 'or is it to innate repugnance that I owe your dislike?' 'Dislike? repugnance?' Harleigh repeated, with quickness, 'can Elinor be, at once, so generous and so unjust? Can she delineate her own feelings with so touching and so glowing a pencil, yet so ill describe, or so wilfully fail in comprehending mine?'