“I did not know, there in Lucerne, before you came, how happy I might be. You are not so wonderful, but to me you are now a need, like air which I must breathe to live.”
There was an anguish underlying his words which set her heart to aching intolerably.
“Oh,” she gasped helplessly, “let us walk on! Let us go home! I cannot bear to hear all that again.”
She turned to go, but he caught her hand in his.
“I must speak,” he said forcefully, though in the lowest possible tones; “it is perhaps the tenth time, but it is certainly the last time. Will you not think once more again of it all, and say here now that you love me?”
He held her hand so tightly that it was impossible for her to withdraw it. She looked up in his face, and the moon showed each the unfeigned feeling of the other.
“You don’t know about marriage,” she told him with white lips and laboring breath. “One may be very unhappy alone, and there is always the strength to bear, but when you are married and unhappiness comes, there is always that other unhappiness chained to you like a clog, shutting out all joy in the present, all hope in the future; and nothing can help you, and you can help nothing.” She stopped and put her hand to her bosom. “Only death can help!” she cried, in a voice as if a physical torture had its grip upon her; “and it is so awful when death alone can help!” She looked at the ground and then up at him. “Oh,” she sighed miserably, “how can I dare to go where I may come to that pass again? Don’t ask that of me.”
He turned his face away from her and she felt his fingers loosen, little by little, their clasp upon her arm. Then he loosed her altogether, left her side, moved away a space, and stood, his head bowed, his eyes bent upon the water. There was a fearful horror of hopelessness in his attitude.
Down from the Gasteig came a cab, an empty cab, and he looked up and hailed it.
“We will ride home,” he said, coming back to her; “I am bereft of strength.”