"Do not say that, Ernst."
His eyes, filled with a passionate entreaty, met her reproachful glance, as together they walked down the veranda steps into the garden. "Are you a little glad when I come?" he went on, in a low tone. "I sometimes imagine you dread my approach and shrink from my embrace, and more than once I have fancied I could detect a sigh of relief when I left you."
"Yes, you watch every look of mine, every breath that I draw, and convert it all into pain, both for yourself and for me," Erna said, gravely. "Your passionate surveillance torments me; how will it be when we are married?"
"Ah, then I shall be calm," he said, with a sigh. "Then I shall know you for my own, my very own; no other will have any right to intrude between us, and then perhaps I may teach you to love me; hitherto I have tried in vain. That you can love I know. You loved--him!"
She hastily withdrew the hand she had left in his: "Ernst, you promised me----"
"Not to speak of that. Yes, I promised, but I did not know how hard it is to fight against a memory, to war with a mere phantom. Would that it were flesh and blood, that I might battle with it to the death!"
His eyes flashed with the mortal hatred that had gleamed in them when he had learned that Erna had loved another. She turned pale, as she laid her hand soothingly upon his arm.
"Ernst," she said, gently, "why torment yourself thus perpetually? You suffer terribly; I see it, and bitterly do I repent my confession. Have I no power to make you calmer and happier?"
Her tone disarmed him at once; he took her hand, and kissed it eagerly: "Your power over me is boundless when you look and speak thus. Forgive me for paining you; indeed it shall not happen again."
The promise had been made a hundred times before, and broken as often. Erna smiled, but she was still pale as they walked back to the house.