'I think, nay I am convinced, that you can do nothing but what is dictated by purity, what is intentionally right; yet here, I am persuaded, 'tis some right of exaggeration, some right stretched, by false reasoning, or undue influence, nearly to wrong. That the cause of the mystery which envelopes you is substantial, I have not any doubt; but surely the effects which you attribute to it must be chimerical. To reject the most trivial succour, to refuse the smallest communication--' 'You probe me, Sir, too painfully!--I appear, to you, I see, wilfully obstinate, and causelessly obscure: yet to be justified to you, I must incur a harsher censure from myself! Thus situated, we cannot separate too soon. Think over, I beg of you, when you are alone, all that has passed: your candour, I trust, will shew you, that my reserve has been too consistent in its practice, to be capricious in its motives. I can add nothing more. I entreat, I even supplicate you, to desist from all further enquiry; and to leave me!' 'In such utter, such impenetrable darkness?--With no period assigned?--not even any vague, any distant term in view, for letting in some little ray of light?--' He spoke this in a tone so melancholy, yet so unopposingly respectful, that Ellis, resistlessly affected, put her hand to her head, and half, and almost unconsciously pronounced, 'Were my destiny fixed ... known even to myself....' She stopt, but Harleigh, who, slowly, and by hard self-compulsion, had moved towards the door, sprang back, with a countenance wholly re-animated; and with eyes brightly sparkling, in the full lustre of hope and joy, exclaimed, 'It is not, then, fixed?--your destiny--mine, rather! is still open to future events?--O say that again! tell me but that my condemnation is not irrevocable, and I will not ask another word!--I will not persecute you another minute!--I will be all patience, all endurance;--if there be barely some possibility that I have not seen and admired only to regret you!--that I have not known and appreciated--merely to lose you!'