rable, or is it
fair?--Is it," she added, after a moment's hesitation--"is it kind?"

The tremulous accent fell especially on the last word she uttered, and
it was spoken in a low tone of gentle reproach, which went to Julian's
heart.

"If," said he, "there was a mode by which, at the peril of my life,
Alice, I could show my regard--my respect--my devoted tenderness--the
danger would be dearer to me than ever was pleasure."

"You have said such things often," said Alice, "and they are such as I
ought not to hear, and do not desire to hear. I have no tasks to impose
on you--no enemies to be destroyed--no need or desire of protection--no
wish, Heaven knows, to expose you to danger--It is your visits here
alone to which danger attaches. You have but to rule your own wilful
temper--to turn your thoughts and your cares elsewhere, and I can have
nothing to ask--nothing to wish for. Use your own reason--consider the
injury you do yourself--the injustice you do us--and let me, once
more, in fair terms, entreat you to absent yourself from this
place--till--till----"

She paused, and Julian eagerly interrupted her.--"Till when,
Alice?--till when?--impose on me any length of absence which your
severity can inflict, short of a final separation--Say, Begone for
years, but return when these years are over; and, slow and wearily as
they must pass away, still the thought that they must at length have
their period, will enable me to live through them. Let me, then, conjure
thee, Alice, to name a date--to fix a term--to say till _when!_"

"Till you can bear to think of me only as a friend and sister."

"That is a sentence of eternal banishment indeed!" said Julian; "it
is seeming, no doubt, to fix a term of exile, but attaching to it an
impossible condition."

"And why impossible, Julian?" said Alice, in a tone of persuasion; "were
we not happier ere you threw the mask from your own countenance, and
tore the veil from my foolish eyes? Did we not meet with joy, spend our
time happily, and part cheerily, because we transgressed no duty, and
incurred no self-reproach? Bring back that state of happy ignorance, and
you shall have no reason to call me unkind. But while you form schemes
which I know to be visionary, and use language of such violence and
passion, you shall excuse me if I now, and once for all, declare, that
since Deborah shows herself unfit for the trust reposed in her, and
must needs expose me to persecutions of this na