Being able to walk, and, as he believed, fit for the
execution of his great design, he begged Trefry to trust him into
the air, believing a walk would do him good; which was granted him:
and taking Imoinda with him as he used to do in his more happy and
calmer days, he led her up into a wood, where (after with a thousand
sighs, and long gazing silently on her face, while tears gushed, in
spite of him, from his eyes) he told her his design, first of
killing her, and then his enemies, and next himself, and the
impossibility of escaping, and therefore he told her the necessity
of dying. He found the heroic wife faster pleading for death that he
was to propose it, when she found his fixed resolution; and, on her
knees, besought him not to leave her a prey to his enemies. He
(grieved to death, yet pleased at her noble resolution) took her up,
and embracing of her with all the passion and languishment of a
dying lover, drew his knife to kill this treasure of his soul, this
pleasure of his eyes; while tears trickled down his cheeks, hers
were smiling with joy she should die by so noble a hand, and be sent
into her own country (for that's their notion of the next world) by
him she so tenderly loved, and so truly adored in this: for wives have
a respect for their husbands equal to what any other people pay a
deity; and when a man finds any occasion to quit his wife, if he
love her, she dies by his hand; if not, he sells her, or suffers
some other to kill her.
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