Page:The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Volume 1).djvu/338

290 enthusiasm of love. "Fitzeustace! you will not likewise desert the poor isolated Eloise?"

"Say not isolated, dearest love. Can, can you fear, my love, whilst your Fitzeustace exists? Say, adored Eloise, shall we now be united, never, never to part again? Say, will you consent to our immediate union?"

"Know you not," exclaimed Eloise, in a low, faltering voice, "know you not that I have been another's?"

"Oh! suppose me not," interrupted the impassioned Fitzeustace, "the slave of such vulgar and narrow-minded prejudice. Does the frightful vice and ingratitude of Nempere sully the spotless excellence of my Eloise's soul?—No, no,—that must ever continue uncontaminated by the frailty of the body in which it is enshrined. It must rise superior to the earth: 'tis that which I adore, Eloise. Say, say, was that Nempere's?"

"Oh! no, never!" cried Eloise, with energy. "Nothing but fear was Nempere's."

"Then why say you that ever you were his?" said Fitzeustace, reproachfully. "You never could have been his, destined as you were for mine, from the first instant the particles composing the soul which I adore, were assimilated by the God whom I worship."