He turned round quickly. The feeling that she was so close to him tore away the last shred of his self-control. "You know that I love you," he said, his voice shaking with passion.
Her face in an instant was colourless. She stood quite still, almost touching him, as though she did not dare move. Her eyes were fixed on his with a frightened, fascinated look.
"You know it. You have known it a long time. Now what are you going to say to me?"
She looked at him without speaking or moving.
"Anna, what are you going to say to me?" he cried; and he caught up her hands and kissed them one after the other, hardly knowing what he did, beside himself with love of her.
She watched him helplessly. She felt faint and sick. She had had a miserable day, and was completely overwhelmed by this last misfortune. Her good friend Axel was gone, gone for ever. The pleasant friendship was done. In place of the friend she so much needed, of the friendship she had found so comforting, there was—this.
"Won't you—won't you let my hands go?" she said faintly. She did not know him again. Was it possible that this agony of love was for her? She knew herself so well, she knew so well what it was for which he was evidently going to break his heart. How wonderful, how pitiful beyond expression, that a good man like Axel should suffer anything because of her. And even in the midst of her fright and misery the thought would not be put from her that if she had happened to look like the baroness or Fräulein Kuhräuber, while inwardly remaining exactly as she was, he would not have broken his heart for her. "Oh, let me go——" she whispered; and turned her head aside, and shut her eyes, unable to look any longer at the love and despair in his.
"But what are you going to say to me?"
"Oh, you know—you know——"
"But you are so sorry always for people who suffer——"