He was still stark-naked, but my modesty
had been already too much wounded, in essentials, to be so
much shocked as I should have otherwise been with appearances
only; in short, my anger ebbed so fast, and the tide of love
return'd so strong upon me, that I felt it a point of my own
happiness to forgive him. The reproaches I made him were
murmur'd in so soft a tone, my eyes met his with such glances,
expressing more languor than resentment, that he could not
but presume his forgiveness was at no desperate distance;
but still he would not quit his posture of submission, till
I had pronounced his pardon in form; which after the most
fervent entreaties, protestations, and promises, I had not
the power to withhold. On which, with the utmost marks of a
fear of again offending, he ventured to kiss my lips, which
I neither declined nor resented; but on my mild expostula-
tions with him upon the barbarity of his treatment, he
explain'd the mystery of my ruin, if not entirely to the
clearance, at least much to the alleviation of his guilt, in
the eyes of a judge so partial in his favour as I was grown.
"Its seems that the circumstance of his going down, or
sinking, which in my extreme ignorance I had mistaken for
something very fatal, was no other than a trick of diving
which I had not ever heard, or at least attended to, the
mention of: and he was so long-breath'd at it, that in the
few moments in which I ran out to save him, he had not yet
emerged, before I fell into the swoon, in which, as he rose,
seeing me extended on the bank, his first idea was that some
young woman was upon some design of frolic or diversion with
him, for he knew I could not have fallen a-sleep there with-
out his having seen me before: agreeably to which notion he
had ventured to approach, and finding me without sign of life,
and still perplex'd as he was what to think of the adventure,
he took me in his arms at all hazards, and carried me into
the summer-house, of which he observed the door open: there
he laid me down on the couch, and tried, as he protested in
good faith, by several means to bring me to myself again,
till fired, as he said, beyond all bearing by the sight and
touch of several parts of me which were unguardedly exposed
to him, he could no longer govern his passion; and the less,
as he was not quite sure that his first idea of this swoon
being a feint was not the very truth of the case: seduced
then by this flattering notion, and overcome by the present,
as he styled them, superhuman temptations, combined with the
solitude and seeming security of the attempt, he was not
enough his own master not to make it.
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