e relish of life should do. Show me the
advantages I am to gain by exile, and farewell to the pale cliffs of
England for ever!"

"Your demand is just," answered Aram; "listen, then. I am willing to
coin all my poor wealth, save alone the barest pittance wherewith to
sustain life; nay, more, I am prepared also to melt down the whole of
my possible expectations from others, into the form of an annuity to
yourself. But mark, it will be taken out of my hands, so that you can
have no power over me to alter the conditions with which it will be
saddled. It will be so vested that it shall commence the moment you
touch a foreign clime; and wholly and for ever cease the moment you set
foot on any part of English ground; or, mark also, at the moment of my
death. I shall then know that no farther hope from me can induce you to
risk this income; for, as I should have spent my all in attaining it,
you cannot even meditate the design of extorting more. I shall know that
you will not menace my life; for my death would be the destruction of
your fortunes. We shall live thus separate and secure from each other;
you will have only cause to hope for my safety; and I shall have no
reason to shudder at yours. Through one channel alone could I then
fear; namely, that in dying, you should enjoy the fruitless vengeance of
criminating me. But this chance I must patiently endure: you, if older,
are more robust and hardy than myself--your life will probably be
longer than mine; and, even were it otherwise, why should we destroy one
another? At my death-bed I will solemnly swear to respect your secret;
why not on your part, I say not swear, but resolve, to respect mine?
We cannot love one another; but why hate with a gratuitous and demon
vengeance? No, Houseman, however circumstances may have darkened or
steeled your heart, it is touched with humanity yet--you will have owed
to me the bread of a secure and easy existence--you will feel that
I have stripped myself, even to penury, to purchase the comforts
I cheerfully resign to you--you will remember that, instead of the
sacrifices enjoined by this alternative, I might have sought only to
counteract your threats, by attempting a life that you strove to make
a snare and torture to my own. You will remember this; and you will not
grudge me the austere and gloomy solitude in which I seek to forget,
or the one solace with which I, perhaps vainly, endeavour to cheer my
passage to a quiet grave. No, House