. . so cruel . . . an absence! . . . my
dearest Fanny! . . . can it? . . . can it be you? . . ."
stifling me at the same time with kisses, that, stopping my
mouth, at once prevented the answer that he panted for, and
increas'd the delicious disorder in which all my senses were
rapturously lost. Amidst however, this crowd of ideas, and
all blissful ones, there obtruded only one cruel doubt, that
poison'd nearly all the transcendent happiness: and what was
it, but my dread of its being too excessive to be real? I
trembled now with the fear of its being no more than a
dream, and of my waking out of it into the horrors of find-
ing it one. Under this fond apprehension, imagining I could
not make too much of the present prodigious joy, before it
should vanish and leave me in the desert again, nor verify
its reality too strongly, I clung to him, I clasp'd him, as
if to hinder him from escaping me again: "Where have you
been? . . . how could you . . . could you leave me? . . .
Say you are still mine . . . that you still love me . . .
and thus! thus!" (kissing him as if I would consolidate lips
with him!) "I forgive you . . . forgive my hard fortune in
favour of this restoration."
All these interjections breaking from me, in that wild-
ness of expression that justly passes for eloquence in love,
drew from him all the returns my fond heart could wish or
require.
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