"You will not believe me. I cannot measure and weigh my words as you do. If there is no voice in your heart speaking for me--if you are not willing to listen to me with your heart, then----"
Her voice was drowned in tears.
"What is this?" said Oldenburg, seizing his head with both his hands. "Am I dreaming? Is this my head? Are these my hands? Am I Oldenburg? Are you Melitta? You, who are shedding tears, because I, Oldenburg, do not understand you, or will not understand you?"
"You shall understand me," said Melitta, drying her tears, with an impetuosity very unusual in her. "You have seen me so often weak and irresolute in our intercourse, that you do not think me any longer capable of forming a resolution. And yet I have the strength to do so; and that I have it, I owe to you, Adalbert. During the sickness of my child you have spoken to me, and I have not closed my heart to your voice. I have heard it very distinctly during the long, anxious night hours which I spent watching and weeping by the bedside of my child. Then I have asked my child's pardon with silent, burning tears, that I could ever forget being a mother. Then I have vowed to myself that I would never, never forget it again. Then I have----"
She was silent; burning shame flooded her cheeks with deep glowing blushes; but she made a great effort and said,
"Then I have abjured a passion which humiliates me in my own eyes, in my child's eyes, and, Adalbert, in yours."
"Stop, Melitta! stop!" cried Oldenburg, rising suddenly. "You are beside yourself! You are not alone! You are in the presence of another person--of a man who loves you, Melitta. He does not want to hear what you ought to say to no one but to yourself."
"Let me finish, Adalbert! I trust in your goodness, as I trust in your strength. I have not told you all yet; not even all the vows I have made by the bedside of my sick child. I have often thought of your child, then, and that a most terrible fate has robbed you of the love of your child as well as of the love of her whom you love. And then I vowed that, if I cannot make you as happy as you deserve to be; if much, far too much, has happened which parts you and me forever; I can yet help you bear your fate, as far as in me lies. I will try to reconcile you to life, and live for you as far as I am able."
Melitta had, while she said these words, risen from the sofa. She stood before him with deep-red cheeks and beaming eyes.
Oldenburg had heard her with breathless excitement, with an emotion which grew stronger and deeper with every word. His eyes flashed, his bosom heaved, he pressed his hands upon his heart, which felt as if it would burst with unspeakable bliss.