"Then you are, after all, afraid, darling!" replied Oswald, bending his face so low that his breath touched her cheek.
"Not by your side, If we were going to face death!"
Emily hung around Oswald's neck; the lips, which did not meet for the first time to-day, touched each other in one long, burning kiss.
They walked up and down the avenue. They did not mind that they could not see the trunks of the trees at a few paces distance--that the cold breath of the sea blew on them; the darker it was, the further they felt removed from the world, which must not know anything of their love; and the colder it was, the more frequently would he wrap the warm shawl around her--the more closely could she press to his bosom, to his arms. The whole fire of passion which was burning in Emily's heart flared up in wild flames. She kissed his hands, she kissed his lips, she laughed, she cried, she was beside herself! "Oh, take me with you, Oswald! wherever you want--to the end of the world--where no one knows us, no one blames our love! I do not care for riches and for rank. I have not learnt to work, but I will learn it with pleasure for your sake. You laugh; you do not believe me. Oh, try me! Make me your slave; I do not complain, if I can only be near you! And, Oswald, when you do not love me any more, then tell me frankly; or no! rather tell me not! take, without saying a word--take a dagger and thrust it in my heart; and then, when all is over, allow me, for pity's sake, the unspeakable bliss of breathing my last in a kiss on your lips!"
Thus spoke the passionate woman amid kisses and caresses--now jubilant, now melancholy, now in broken stammering words, and now in winged words of eloquence, like a young little bird that would like to sing forth all that is in its beating bosom at once, and yet cannot accomplish more than a soft twittering, and now and then a clear note.
She could not understand why Oswald refused to visit her openly the next day, and thenceforth to show himself at her house whenever she saw company. She fancied such intercourse would be perfectly charming. "Cloten is often absent for half the day. When you are once introduced at our house we can spend the most lovely hours together undisturbed."
"Never!"
"Why never? You do not want to see me?"
"I should like nothing better; but the question is: Can I do it? But how can I return into your society, after leaving in the manner in which I did? It has always been my principle never again to set foot across the threshold of a house where I have been one insulted, purposely or accidentally; for what has been done once may be done again. And if it is not done, confidence and intimacy must needs be gone, and they are as little apt to return as innocence."
"But why do you mind the others? Those I do not wish to see and to notice, I never do see or notice."