“You’ll return to your father?”
“I will.”
It seemed to them that the opposite of what had just happened, was going on now. No longer he, but she had the violent mastery. Her kisses were wounds; her caresses a murder.
She grew still, and, gently pushing him away, again breathed, in a scarcely audible whisper:—
“Swear it!”
He wavered, like a man on the brink of committing suicide, when the knife is already raised. Nevertheless he said—
“I swear, before God.”
She blew out the candle and embraced him with endless love, deep, terrible as death. It seemed to him he was flying with her, a witch, a white sorceress, towards some bottomless gloom, borne on the wings of the storm.
He knew it was his doom, the end of everything, and he rejoiced in it.