'
'I am at a loss for your meaning; at least, favour me by speaking
explicitly: you see I respect your sentiments, and do not presume to
urge that on which my very happiness depends.'
'To be brief, then, I will not affect to conceal that marriage is a
state which has often been the object of my meditations. I think it the
duty of all women that so important a change in their destiny should
be well considered. If I know anything of myself, I am convinced that I
should never survive an unhappy marriage.'
'But why dream of anything so utterly impossible?'
'So very probable, so very certain, you mean. Ay! I repeat my words, for
they are truth. If I ever marry, it is to devote every feeling and every
thought, each hour, each instant of existence, to a single being for
whom I alone live. Such devotion I expect in return; without it I should
die, or wish to die; but such devotion can never be returned by you.'
'You amaze me! I! who live only on your image.'
'Your education, the habits in which you are brought up, the maxims
which have been instilled into you from your infancy, the system which
each year of your life has more matured, the worldly levity with which
everything connected with woman is viewed by you and your companions;
whatever may be your natural dispositions, all this would prevent you,
all this would render it a perfect impossibility, all this will ever
make you utterly unconscious of the importance of the subject on which
we are now conversing.
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