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must submit. Besides, she had memories of past tenderness to cherish,
smiles, words, and even tears, to con over, which, though remembered in
desertion and sorrow, were to be preferred to the forgetfulness of the
grave. It was impossible to guess at the whole of her plan. Her letter to
Raymond gave no clue for discovery; it assured him, that she was in no
danger of wanting the means of life; she promised in it to preserve
herself, and some future day perhaps to present herself to him in a station
not unworthy of her. She then bade him, with the eloquence of despair and
of unalterable love, a last farewell.
All these circumstances were now related to Adrian and Idris. Raymond then
lamented the cureless evil of his situation with Perdita. He declared,
notwithstanding her harshness, he even called it coldness, that he loved
her. He had been ready once with the humility of a penitent, and the duty
of a vassal, to surrender himself to her; giving up his very soul to her
tutelage, to become her pupil, her slave, her bondsman. She had rejected
these advances; and the time for such exuberant submission, which must be
founded on love and nourished by it, was now passed. Still all his wishes
and endeavours were directed towards her peace, and his chief discomfort
arose from the perception that he exerted himself in vain. If she were to
continue inflexible in the line of conduct she now pursued, they must part.
The combinations and occurrences of this senseless mode of intercourse were
maddening to him. Yet he would not propose the separation. He was haunted
by the fear of causing the death of one or other of the beings implicated
in these events; and he could not persuade himself to undertake to direct
the course of events, lest, ignorant of the land he traversed, he should
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