Donna Maria advanced slowly, no longer led by Delfina, who, wild with delight, rushed about with no thought but for stripping the whole wood.
Andrea plucked up his courage.
'Can you forgive me?' he asked anxiously. 'I did not mean to offend you. Indeed, seeing you so far above me, so pure, so unapproachable, I thought that never in this world could I reveal my secret to you, never ask anything of you, never put myself in your way. Since ever I saw you, I have thought of you night and day, but without hope, without any definite end in view. I know that you do not love me, that you never can love me. And yet, believe me, I would renounce every promise that life may have in store for me, just for the hope of living in a little corner of your heart——'
She continued to advance slowly under the sun-flecked trees, while the delicate tassels of pink and white blossom swayed gently above her head.
'Believe me, Maria—only believe me! If I were bidden at this moment to give up every desire and every ambition, the dearest memories of the past and the most flattering promises of the future, and to live solely in the thought of and for you—without a to-morrow, without a yesterday, without other ties or attachments, far from the world, lost to everything but you, till death—to all eternity—I would not hesitate for one instant. You have looked at me and talked to me, have smiled and answered; you have sat at my side pensive and silent; side by side with me you have lived your own inner life, that inscrutable and inaccessible existence of which I know nothing—can never know anything—- and your soul has taken full and absolute possession of mine to its deepest depths, but without ever a thought, without being aware of it, as the ocean swallows up a river.—What is my love to you? What is any one's love to you? The word has too often been profaned, and the sentiment too often a make-believe.—I do not offer you love. But surely you will not refuse the humble tribute of devotion that my spirit offers up to a being nobler and higher than itself.'
She walked on at the same slow pace, her head bent, her face bloodless, towards a seat at the further end of the wood and facing the sea.
It was a wide semicircle of white marble with a back running round the entire length and, for sole ornamentation, a lion's paw at each end as a support. It recalled those antique seats on which, in some island of the Archipelago or in Greece or Pompeii, ladies reclined and listened to a reading from the poets, under the shade of the oleanders, within sight of the sea. Here the arbutus cast the shadow of its blossom and its fruit, and in contrast to the marble, the coral of the stems seemed more vivid than elsewhere.
'I care for everything that interests you; you possess all those things after which I am seeking. Pity from you would be more precious to me than passionate love from any other woman. Your hand upon my heart—I know—would cause a second youth to spring up in me far purer than the first and stronger. The ceaseless vacillation which makes up the sum of my inner life would find rest and stability in you. My unsatisfied and restless spirit, harried by a perpetual warfare between attraction and repulsion, eternally and irremediably alone, would find in yours a haven of refuge against the doubts which contaminate every ideal, and weaken the will. There are men more unfortunate, but I doubt if in the whole wide world there was ever one less happy than I.'
He was making use of Obermann's words as his own. In the sort of sentimental intoxication to which he had worked himself up, all his melancholy broodings surged to his lips, and the mere sound of his own voice—with a little quiver of humble entreaty in it—served to augment his emotions.