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Rh scattered spirits. It wants two hours of midnight. Before midnight I will be with you."

"Incomprehensible being!" replied the Englishman, "I would leave the life you have preserved in your own hands; but what I have seen this night has swept even Viola from my thoughts. A fiercer desire than that of love burns in my veins — the desire not to resemble but to surpass my kind — the desire to penetrate and to share the secret of your own existence — the desire of a preternatural knowledge and unearthly power. I make my choice. In my ancestor's name, I adjure and remind thee of thy pledge. Instruct me; school me; make me thine; and I surrender to thee at once, and without a murmur, the woman whom, till I saw thee, I would have defied a world to obtain."

"I bid thee consider well; on the one hand, Viola, a tranquil home, a happy and serene life. On the other hand, all is darkness — darkness, that even these eyes cannot penetrate."

"But thou hast told me, that if I wed Viola, I must be contented with the common existence — if I refuse, it is to aspire to thy knowledge and thy power."

Vain man! — knowledge and power are not happiness."

"But they are better than happiness. Say! — if I marry Viola, wilt thou be my master — my guide? Say this, and I am resolved."

"It were impossible."

"Then I renounce her! I renounce love. I renounce happiness. Welcome solitude — welcome