But this mood did not last long. He had not been alone five minutes before there sprang up within him something which could be called nothing less than a personal struggle with--he could not tell what. There is a quickening of excitement in a mental encounter, in the course of a momentous discussion, which almost reaches the height of that passion which is roused by bodily conflict, when the subject is important enough, or the antagonists in deadly earnest. But to describe how this is intensified when the discussion takes place not between two, but in the spiritual consciousness of one, is almost too much for words to accomplish. Lord Erradeen in the complete solitude of this room, closed and curtained and shut out from all access of the world, suddenly felt himself in the height of such a controversy. He saw no one, nor did it occur to him again to look for any one. There was no need. Had his former visitor appeared, as before, seated opposite to him in the chair which stood so suggestively between the fire and the table, his pulses would have calmed, and his mind become composed at once. But there was nobody to address him in human speech, to oppose to him the changes of a human countenance. The question was discussed within himself with such rapidity of argument and reply, such clash of intellectual weapons, as never occurs to the external hearing. There passed thus under review the entire history of the struggle which had been going on from the time of Lord Erradeen's first arrival at the home of his race. It ran after this fashion, though with the quickness of thought far swifter than words. "You thought you had conquered me. You thought you had escaped me." "I did; you had no power in the glen, or on the isle." "Fool! I have power everywhere, wherever you have been." "To betray me into wickedness?" "To let you go your own way. Did I tempt you to evil before ever you heard of me?" "Can I tell? perhaps to prepare me for bondage." "At school, at home, abroad, in all relations? Self-lover! My object at least is better than yours." "I am no self-lover; rather self-hater, self-despiser." "It is the same thing. Self before all. I offer you something better, the good of your race." "I have no race. I refuse!" "You shall not refuse. You are mine, you must obey me." "Never! I am no slave. I am my own master." "The slave of every petty vice; the master of no impulse. Yield! I can crush you if I please." "Never! I am--Oona's then, who will stand by me." "Oona's! a girl! who when she knows what you are will turn and loathe you." "Fiend! You fled when she gave me her hand." "Will she touch your hand when she knows what it has clasped before?"