Page:Glenarvon (Volume 2).djvu/253

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of repentance and reformation alone. Remember when a word or look were regarded by you as a crime—how you shuddered at the bare idea of guilt. Now you can hear its language with interest: it has lost its horror: Ah soon it shall be the only language your heart will like. Shrink not, start not, Calantha: the road you pursue is that which I have followed. See and acknowledge then, the power I hold over your heart; and yield to what is already destined. You imagine, when I speak of guilt, that you can shrink from me, that you can hate me; but you have lost the power, and let me add, the right: you are become a sharer in that iniquity—you must be a sharer in my fate. The actual commission of crime still excites horror; but do you remember when you shuddered at every approach to it? And cannot he who has triumphed thus far gain all, think you, if it were his desire? Yes, you are mine—a being wholly relying upon a wish, a breath, which I may