You know, as I do, that it is a bad fiend and a wicked one,--a fiend that is prompting you to the worst cruelty in the world.

Alice! Alice! Alice! Try to think of all this as though some other person were concerned.

If it were your friend, what advice would you give her ?" "I would bid her tell the man who had loved her,--that is, if he were noble, good, and great,--that she found herself to be unfit to be his wife; and then I would bid her ask his pardon humbly on her knees." As she said this, she sank before him on to the floor, and looked up into his face with an expression of sad contrition which almost drew him from his purposed firmness.
He had purposed to be firm,--to yield to her in nothing, resolving to treat all that she might say as the hallucination of a sickened imagination,--as the effect of absolute want of health, for which some change in her mode of life would be the best cure.

She might bid him begone in what language she would.

He knew well that such was her intention.