Determination...

`Well`, said Crawford, after a course of rapid questions and reluctant answers - ` I am happier than I was, because now I understand more clearly your opinion of me. You think me - easily swayed by the whim of the moment - easily tempted - easily put aside. With such an opinion, no wonder that - but we shall see. It is not by protestations that I shall endeavour to convince you that I am wronged, it is not by telling you that my affections are steady. My conduct shall speak for me - absence, distance, time shall speak for me. They shall prove that as far as you can be deserved by anybody, I do deserve you. You are infinitely my superior in merit; all that I know. You have qualities which I had not before supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some touches of the angel in you, beyond what - not merely beyond what one sees, because one never sees anything like it - but beyond what one fancies might be. But still I am not frightened. It is not by equality of merit that you can be won. That is out of the question. It is he who sees and worships your merit the strongest, who loves you more devotedly, that has the best right to a return. There I build my confidence. By that right I do and will deserve you; and when once convinced that my attachment is what I declare it, I know you too well not to entertain the warmest hopes - Yes, dearest, sweetest Fanny - nay (seeing her draw back displeased), forgive me. Perhaps I have as yet no right - but by what other name can I call you? Do you suppose you are ever present in my imagination under any other? No, it is "Fanny" that I think of all day, and dream of all night. You have given the name such reality of sweetness, that nothing else can now be descriptive of you.` (Henry Crawford to Fanny Price)

(Jane Austen - Mansfield Park)


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