“To love,” pursued Melmoth, “is to live in an
existence of perpetual contradictions--to feel that absence is
insupportable, and yet be doomed to experience the presence of the
object as almost equally so--to be full of ten thousand thoughts while
he is absent, the confession of which we dream will render our next
meeting delicious, yet when the hour of meeting arrives, to feel
ourselves, by a timidity alike oppressive and unaccountable, robbed of
the power of expressing one--to be eloquent in his absence, and dumb in
his presence--to watch for the hour of his return as for the dawn of a
new existence, yet when it arrives, to feel all those powers suspended
which we imagined it would restore to energy--_to be the statue that
meets the sun, but without the music his presence should draw from
it_--to watch for the light of his looks, as a traveller in the deserts
looks for the rising of the sun; and when it bursts on our awakened
world, to sink fainting under its overwhelming and intolerable glory,
and almost wish it were night again--this is love!”--“Then I believe I
love,” said Isidora half audibly. “To feel,” added Melmoth with
increasing energy, “that our existence is so absorbed in his, that we
have lost all consciousness but of his presence--all sympathy but of his
enjoyments--all sense of suffering but when he suffers--_to be_ only
because _he is_--and to have no other use of being but to devote it to
him, while our humiliation increases in proportion to our devotedness;
and the lower you bow before your idol, the prostrations seem less and
less worthy of being the expression of your devotion,--till you are only
_his_, when you are not yourself--To feel that to the sacrifice of
yourself, all other sacrifices are inferior; and in it, therefore, all
other sacrifices must be included. That she who loves, must remember no
longer her individual existence, her natural existence--that she must
consider parents, country, nature, society, religion itself--(you
tremble, Immalee--Isidora I would say)--only as grains of incense flung
on the altar of the heart, to burn and exhale their sacrificed odours
there.”--“Then I do love,” said Isidora; and she wept and trembled
indeed at this terrible confession--“for I have forgot the ties they
told me were natural,--the country of which they said I was a native. I
will renounce, if it must be so, parents,--country,--the habits which I
have acquired,--the thoughts which I have learnt,--the religion which
I----Oh no! my God! my Saviour!” she exclaimed, darting from the
casement, and clinging to the crucifix--“No! I will never renounce
you!--I will never renounce you!--you will not forsake me in the hour of
death!--you will not desert me in the moment of trial!--you will not
forsake me at this moment!”

“By the wax-lights that burned in her apartment, Melmoth could see her
prostrate before the sacred image. He could see that devotion of the
heart which made it throb almost visibly in the white and palpitating
bosom--the clasped hands that seemed imploring aid against that
rebellious heart, whose beatings they vainly struggled to repress; and
then, locked and upraised, asked forgiveness from heaven for their
fruitless opposition. He could see the wild but profound devotion with
which she clung to the crucifix,--and he shuddered to behold it. He
never gazed on that symbol,--his eyes were immediately averted;--yet now
he looked long and intently at her as she knelt before it. He seemed to
suspend the diabolical instinct that governed his existence, and to view
her for the pure pleasure of sight. Her prostrate figure,--her rich
robes that floated round her like drapery round an inviolate
shrine,--her locks of light streaming over her naked shoulders,--her
small white hands locked in agony of prayer,--the purity of expression
that seemed to identify the agent with the employment, and made one
believe they saw not a suppliant, but the embodied spirit of
supplication, and feel, that lips like those had never held communion
with aught below heaven.--All this Melmoth beheld; and feeling that in
this he could never participate, he turned away his head in stern and
bitter agony,--and the moon-beam that met his burning eye saw no tear
there. “Had he looked a moment longer, he might have beheld a change in the
expression of Isidora too flattering to his pride, if not to his heart. He might have marked all that profound and perilous absorption of the
soul, when it is determined to penetrate the mysteries of love or of
religion, and chuse “whom it will serve”--that _pause_ on the brink of
an abyss, in which all its energies, its passions, and its powers, are
to be immersed--that pause, while the balance is trembling (and we
tremble with it) between God and man. “In a few moments, Isidora arose from before the cross. There was more
composure, more elevation in her air. There was also that air of
decision which an unreserved appeal to the Searcher of hearts never
fails to communicate even to the weakest of those he has made. “Melmoth, returning to his station beneath the casement, looked on her
for some time with a mixture of compassion and wonder--feelings that he
hasted to repel, as he eagerly demanded, “What proof are you ready to
give of _that_ love I have described--of that which alone deserves the
name?”--“Every proof,” answered Isidora firmly, “that the most devoted
of the daughters of man can give--my heart and hand,--my resolution to
be yours amid mystery and grief,--to follow you in exile and loneliness
(if it must be) through the world!”

“As she spoke, there was a light in her eye,--a glow on her brow,--an
expansive and irradiated sublimity around her figure,--that made it
appear like the rare and glorious vision of the personified union of
passion and purity,--as if those eternal rivals had agreed to reconcile
their claims, to meet on the confines of their respective dominions, and
had selected the form of Isidora as the temple in which their league
might be hallowed, and their union consummated--and never were the
opposite divinities so deliciously lodged. They forgot their ancient
feuds, and agreed to dwell there for ever. “There was a grandeur, too, about her slender form, that seemed to
announce that pride of purity,--that confidence in external weakness,
and internal energy,--that conquest without armour,--that victory over
the victor, which makes the latter blush at his triumph, and compels him
to bow to the standard of the besieged fortress at the moment of its
surrender. She stood like a woman devoted, but not humiliated by her
devotion--uniting tenderness with magnanimity--willing to sacrifice
every thing to her lover, but that which must lessen the value of the
sacrifice in his eyes--willing to be the victim, but feeling worthy to
be the priestess. “Melmoth gazed on her as she stood. One generous, one human feeling,
throbbed in his veins, and thrilled in his heart.