The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

'Your dear whore,' says I, 'you would have said if you had gone on, and

you might as well have said it; but I understand you. However, I

desire you to remember the long discourses you have had with me, and

the many hours' pains you have taken to persuade me to believe myself

an honest woman; that I was your wife intentionally, though not in the

eyes of the world, and that it was as effectual a marriage that had

passed between us as is we had been publicly wedded by the parson of

the parish. You know and cannot but remember that these have been your

own words to me.' I found this was a little too close upon him, but I made it up in what

follows. He stood stock-still for a while and said nothing, and I went

on thus: 'You cannot,' says I, 'without the highest injustice, believe

that I yielded upon all these persuasions without a love not to be

questioned, not to be shaken again by anything that could happen

afterward. If you have such dishonourable thoughts of me, I must ask

you what foundation in any of my behaviour have I given for such a

suggestion?

'If, then, I have yielded to the importunities of my affection, and if

I have been persuaded to believe that I am really, and in the essence

of the thing, your wife, shall I now give the lie to all those

arguments and call myself your whore, or mistress, which is the same

thing? And will you transfer me to your brother? Can you transfer my

affection? Can you bid me cease loving you, and bid me love him? It

is in my power, think you, to make such a change at demand? No, sir,'

said I, 'depend upon it 'tis impossible, and whatever the change of

your side may be, I will ever be true; and I had much rather, since it

is come that unhappy length, be your whore than your brother's wife.' He appeared pleased and touched with the impression of this last

discourse, and told me that he stood where he did before; that he had

not been unfaithful to me in any one promise he had ever made yet, but

that there were so many terrible things presented themselves to his

view in the affair before me, and that on my account in particular,

that he had thought of the other as a remedy so effectual as nothing

could come up to it. That he thought this would not be entire parting

us, but we might love as friends all our days, and perhaps with more

satisfaction than we should in the station we were now in, as things

might happen; that he durst say, I could not apprehend anything from

him as to betraying a secret, which could not but be the destruction of

us both, if it came out; that he had but one question to ask of me that

could lie in the way of it, and if that question was answered in the

negative, he could not but think still it was the only step I could

take.