sure in throwing yourself into the waves again, the
instant you have climbed a rock of refuge!'

'Pleasure? Is there any pleasure in feeling oneself at death-grips with
the devil? I bad given up believing in him for many a year .... And
behold, the moment that I awaken to anything noble and right, I find the
old serpent alive and strong at my throat! No wonder that I suspect
him, you, myself--I, who have been tempted, every hour in the last week,
temptations to become a devil. Ay,' he went on, raising his voice, as
all the fire of his intense Eastern nature flashed from his black eyes,
'to be a devil! From my childhood till now never have I known what it
was to desire and not to possess. It is not often that I have had to
trouble any poor Naboth for his vineyard: but when I have taken a fancy
to it, Naboth has always found it wiser to give way. And now.... Do you
fancy that I have not had a dozen hellish plots flashing across me in
the last week? Look here! This is the mortgage of her father's whole
estate. I bought it--whether by the instigation of Satan or of God--of
a banker in Berenice, the very day I left them; and now they, and every
straw which they possess, are in my power. I can ruin them--sell them as
slaves--betray them to death as rebels--and last, but not least, cannot
I hire a dozen worthy men to carry her off, and cut the Gordian knot
most simply and summarily? And yet I dare not. I must be pure to
approach the pure; and righteous, to kiss the feet of the righteous.
Whence came this new conscience to me I know not, but come it has; and
I dare no more do a base thing toward her, than I dare toward a God,
if there be one. This very mortgage--I hate it, curse it, now that I
possess it--the tempting devil!'

'Burn it,' said Synesius quietly.

'Perhaps I may. At least, used it never shall be. Compel her? I am too
proud, or too honourable, or something or other, even to solicit her.
She must come to me; tell me with her own lips that she loves me, that
she will take me, and make me worthy of her. She must have mercy on me,
of her own free will, or--let her pine and die in that accursed prison;
and then a scratch with the trusty old dagger for her father, and
another for myself, will save him from any more superstitions, and me
from any more philosophic doubts, for a few aeons of ages, till we start
again in new lives--he, I suppose, as a jackass, and I as a baboon. What
matter? but unless I possess her by fai