"You make me a liar by such language: you sully my honour. I declared I
could not change: you tell me to my face I shall change soon. And what a
distortion in your judgment, what a perversity in your ideas, is proved
by your conduct! Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than
to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach? for
you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend
by living with me?"
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This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned
traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They
spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. "Oh,
comply!" it said. "Think of his misery; think of his danger--look at his
state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the
recklessness following on despair--soothe him; save him; love him; tell
him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or
who will be injured by what you do?"
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