THE OUBLIETTE
"Furcht bich nicht, du liebes Kindchen,
Bor der bösen Geister Macht!
Tag und Nacht, du liebes Kindchen,
Halten Englein bei dir Wacht!"
HEINE.
The minutes dropped slowly into the hour.
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Something raised a blood-curdling screech that went sobbing and echoing through the cavern. If he had not held her, he would have started in frank alarm. She only gave a drowsy laugh.
"'Tis Barbarossa, the old owl," said she.
And again fell the silence, filled for him with whirling thoughts.
How right had this Geiger-Hans been in his warning! How merciful had Fate been to save him from his own folly! Were he now rolling along the wet Imperial road with the Burgrave's wife, he would have had, doubtless, to clasp her much as he clasped Sidonia. Precarious as it was, his present situation was infinitely preferable. He felt like a father, holding his pretty child, all warm with tenderness; not like a dishonest, cold lover with the woman he cannot love.
Sidonia's light breathing grew fainter and more rhythmic. She was asleep. He had longed, but hardly dared to hope, that she could sleep. In his heart he went down on his knees to her and thanked her, stirred by the eternal parent instinct, perhaps, but also by another emotion, tenderer still and more vital—a reverent bending of his whole manhood before the purity and trustfulness that lay in his embrace.
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