Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/184

176 and self-fed consolation. Yet oh, Julia, I know not even if this would have supported me, if at that epoch of life, when I was most wounded, most stricken in body, most soured in mind, my heart had not met, and fastened itself to yours; I saw you, loved you, and life became to me a new object. Even now, as I write to you, all my bitterness, my pride, vanish; every thing I have longed for disappears; my very ambition is gone; I have no hope but for you, Julia,—beautiful, adored Julia;—when I love you, I love even my kind. Oh, you know not the power you possess over me. Do not betray it; you can yet make me all that my boyhood once dreamt; or you can harden every thought, feeling, sensation, into stone.

"I was to tell you why I look not for happiness in our union. You have now seen my nature. You have traced the history of my life, by tracing the history of my character. You see what I surrender in gaining you. I do not deny the sacrifice. I surrender the very essentials of my present mind and soul. I cease to be worldly.