fe.

MELLEFONT.

Ah! dearest Sara, I promise you the end of your grief, without the end
of your life, which would certainly be the end of mine also. Forget the
terrible tissue of a meaningless dream!

SARA.

I look to you for the strength to be able to forget it. Be it love or
seduction, happiness or unhappiness which threw me into your arms, I am
yours in my heart and will remain so for ever. But I am not yet yours
in the eyes of that Judge, who has threatened to punish the smallest
transgressions of His law----

MELLEFONT.

Then may all the punishment fall upon me alone!

SARA.

What can fall upon you, without touching me too? But do not
misinterpret my urgent request! Another woman, after having forfeited
her honour by an error like mine, might perhaps only seek to regain a
part of it by a legal union. I do not think of that, Mellefont, because
I do not wish to know of any other honour in this world than that of
loving you. I do not wish to be united to you for the world's sake but
for my own. And I will willingly bear the shame of not appearing to be
so, when I am united to you. You need not then, if you do not wish,
acknowledge me to be your wife, you may call me what you will! I will
not bear your name; you shall keep our union as secret as you think
good, and may I always be unworthy of it, if I ever harbour the thought
of drawing any other advantage from it than the appeasing of my
conscience.

MELLEFONT.

Stop, Sara, or I shall die before your eyes. How wretched I am, that I
have not the courage to make you more wretched still! Consider that you
have given yourself up to my guidance; consider that it is my duty to
look to our future, and that I must at present be deaf to your
complaints, if I will not hear you utter more grievous complaints
throughout the rest of your life. Have you then forgotten what I have
so often represented to you in justification of my conduct?

SARA.

I have not forgotten it, Mellefont! You wish first to secure a certain
bequest. You wish first to secure temporal goods, and you let me
forfeit eternal ones, perhaps, through it.

MELLEFONT.

Ah, Sara! If you were as certain of all temporal goods as your virtue
is of the eternal ones----