"I ask of you a sacrifice--a great, heavy sacrifice. Will you make it for my sake?"
"If you ask it. Everything, everything that you want!"
"Suppose that I were to ask you to leave father and home, to go with me far away into a foreign land--would you follow me?"
"Father! Home!" repeated the young girl, mechanically. "But we stay here at Odensburg."
"No. I must begone--will you go with me?"
"I--I do not understand you," said Maia, trembling in every limb.
He threw his arm around her and drew her to him. His face was as pale as death, and in his eyes glowed that threatening flame which had so alarmed her when they first met.
"I told you once of my earlier life," he began, "of a wild, restless pursuit of fortune, that seemed ever to flee before me, until I finally found it here in possessing you--do you remember that?"
"Yes," whispered Maia. Did she remember it! It had been the same hour in which he had declared his love for her.
"I could not unveil that past to your pure child-eyes," continued Wildenrod, his voice sinking into a whisper; "and cannot to-day either, but there is a shadow in it-----"