ALMEIDA, 'is in our power?' 'It is in our power,' said ALMORAN,
'to seize that joy, to which a public form can give us no new claim; for
the public form can only declare that right by which I claim it now.'

As they were now reclining upon a sofa, he threw his arm round her; but
she suddenly sprung up, and burst from him: the tear started to her eye,
and she gazed upon him with an earnest but yet tender look: 'Is it?'
says she--'No sure, it is not the voice of HAMET!' 'O! yes,' said
ALMORAN, 'what other voice should call thee to cancel at once the wrongs
of HAMET and ALMEIDA; to secure the treasures of thy love from the hand
of the robber; to hide, the joys, which if now we lose we may lose for
ever, in the sacred and inviolable stores of the past, and place them
beyond the power not of ALMORAN only but of fate?' With this wild
effusion of desire, he caught her again to his breast, and finding no
resistance his heart exulted in his success; but the next moment, to the
total disappointment of his hopes, he perceived that she had fainted in
his arms. When she recovered, she once more disengaged herself from him,
and turning away her face, she burst into tears. When her voice could be
heard, she covered herself with her veil, and turning again towards him,
'All but this,' said she, 'I had learnt to bear; and how has this been
deserved by ALMEIDA of HAMET? You was my only solace in distress; and
when the tears have stolen from my eyes in silence and in solitude, I
thought on thee; I thought upon the chaste ardour of thy sacred
friendship, which was softened, refined, and exalted into love. This was
my hoarded treasure; and the thoughts of possessing this; soothed all my
anguish with a miser's happiness, who, blest in the consciousness of
hidden wealth, despises cold and hunger, and rejoices in the midst of
all the miseries that make poverty dreadful: this was my last retreat;
but I am now desolate and forlorn, and my soul looks round, with terror,
for that refuge which it can never find.' 'Find that refuge,' said
ALMORAN, 'in me.' 'Alas!' said ALMEIDA, 'can he afford me refuge from my
sorrows, who, for the guilty pleasures of a transient moment, would
forever sully the purity of my mind, and aggravate misfortune by the
consciousness of guilt?'

As ALMORAN now perceived, that it was impossible, by any importunity, to
induce her to violate her principles; he had nothing more to attempt,
but to subvert them. 'When,' said he,