 some points; but I am willing to hear, willing to discuss; and, if truth be on your side, there can be no danger.
The only danger is in the feeble or false colouring which the defenders of truth may give it, and not in truth itself.
I am too well convinced of your power to feel your doubts. You oblige me to see with your eyes, hear with your ears, believe what you believe, and reject what you think incredible. I am and

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must be whatever you please to make me. You have but to prescribe your own conditions.
Prescribe I must not. If I can persuade, if I can win upon your mind—
If—! You won my whole soul the very first moment I saw you! Not a word or action of mine but what has proclaimed the burning impatience of my passion!
True: the burning impatience—Your eagerness to assent will not suffer you to examine. Your opinions and principles are those which the world most highly approves, and applauds: mine are what it daily calls extravagant, impracticable, and absurd. It would be weak in me to expect you should implicitly receive remote truths, so contradictory to this general practice, till you have first deeply

considered them. I ask no such miracle. But if I can but turn your mind to such considerations, if I can but convince you how inestimable they are, even to yourself as well as to the world at large, I shall then have effected my purpose.
Of that, madam, be sure—You shall see!—Upon my honour, you shall!—I will order a fur-cap, a long gown, a white wand, and a pair of sandals this very day! No Grecian ever looked more grave than I will! Nay, if you desire it, razor shall never touch my chin more.
Well, well; equip yourself speedily, and I will provide you with a wooden dish, a lanthorn, and a tub.
But then, having made your conditions, you now grant me your consent?

That is obliging me once more to put on my serious face—The danger in which I so lately saw you hangs heavily on my mind; that and the warm passions by which it was occasioned.
And my excess of ardour, to demonstrate my love, you regard as a proof of my having none.
How passion overshoots itself! Your conclusion is as precipitate as was your proof.
I cannot be cool, madam, on this subject. I wonder to see you so! Did affection throb and burn in your bosom,
