nate kisses.

"Soul of my soul," he said at last, "life of my life, treasure of my
heart, light of my eyes, raise up your dejected brow, and do not
prostrate yourself any longer before me. The sinner, the vile wretch, he
who has shown himself weak of purpose, who has made himself the butt of
scorn and ridicule, is I, not you. Angels and devils alike must laugh at
me and mock me. I have clothed myself with a false sanctity. I was not
able to resist temptation, and to undeceive you in the beginning, as
would have been just, and now I am equally unable to show myself a
gentleman, a man of honor, or a tender lover who knows how to value the
favors of his mistress. I can not understand what it was you saw in me
to attract you. There never was in me any solid virtue--nothing but vain
show and the pedantry of a student who has read pious books as one reads
a novel, and on this foundation has based his foolish romance of a
future devoted to converting the heathen, and to pious meditations. If
there had been in me any solid virtue, I should have undeceived you in
time, and neither you nor I would have sinned. True virtue is not so
easily vanquished. Notwithstanding your beauty, notwithstanding your
intelligence, notwithstanding your love for me, I should not have fallen
if I had been in reality virtuous, if I had had a true vocation. God, to
whom all things are possible, would have bestowed his grace upon me. It
would have needed nothing less than a miracle, or some other
supernatural event, to have enabled me to resist your love, but God
would have wrought the miracle, and I should have been worthy of it, and
a motive sufficient for its being wrought. You are wrong to counsel me
to become a priest. I know my own unworthiness. It was only pride that
actuated me in my desire to be one. It was a worldly ambition, like any
other. What do I say--like any other? It was worse than any other; it
was a hypocritical, a sacrilegious, a simoniacal ambition."

"Do not judge yourself so harshly," said Pepita, now more tranquil, and
smiling through her tears. "I do not want you to judge yourself thus,
not even for the purpose of making me appear less unworthy to be your
companion. No; I would have you choose me through love--freely; not to
repair a fault, not because you have fallen into the snares you perhaps
think I have perfidiously spread for you. If you do not love me, if you
distrust me, if you do not esteem me, then go. My lips shall n