He took in his own hands the slender hands that lay filled with violets on her lap; he bowed his head low over them and kissed them submissively. Then he knelt at her feet, in the same submission. The delicate perfume seemed to arouse his tenderness. During the long pause the fire and the rain continued their murmured speech.
Suddenly she asked in a clear voice:
"Do you think that I believe myself sure of you?"
"Have you not watched over my slumbers?" he replied, but in an altered tone, for he was suddenly seized by a new emotion: with her query he had seen rise before him her naked soul; and he felt that that soul had penetrated his own, and recognized his secret yearning for the belief and confidence of others in himself.
"Yes, but what does that prove?" was her reply. "Youth sleeps quietly on any pillow. You are young"—
"I love you and I have faith in you! I give myself entirely to you. You are my life's companion, and your hand is strong."
He saw the well known sadness in the lines of that loved face, and his voice trembled with tenderness.
"Kindness!" said she, caressing with light touch the hair on his temples. "You know how to be kind—you even feel a need to comfort at times. But a fault has been committed, and it calls for expiation. Once it seemed to me that for you I could do the humblest as well as the highest things; but now I feel that I can do only one thing—to go away, disappear, and leave you free with your destiny."
He interrupted her by springing to his feet and taking the loved face between his hands.
"I can do this, which love alone could not do," she said softly, turning pale, and looking at him with an expression he never had seen before.