"Do you not feel that it is to be?"
"What is to be?"
"I do not know what, but I have been drawn towards you so long a while—long before I saw you, ever since I heard your name, the moment I saw that old photograph in the music-room, I knew."
"What did you know?"
"When I heard your name it called up an image in my mind, and that image has never wholly left me—it comes back often like a ghost."
"When you were thinking of something different?"
"I am your destiny, or one of your destinies."
Her eyes were fixed eagerly upon him; his darkness and the mysteries he represented attracted her, and she even felt she could follow. At the same moment his eyes seemed the most beautiful in the world, and she desired him to make love to her. While enticing, she resisted him, now more feebly, and when he let go her hands she sat looking at him, wondering how she was to get through the evening without kissing him.... She spoke to him about his opera. He asked her if she were going to sing it, and she looked at him with vague, uncertain eyes. He said he knew she never would. She asked him why he thought so, and again a great longing bent him towards her. She withdrew her hands and face from his lips, and they had begun to talk of other things when he perceived her face close to his. Unable to resist he kissed her cheek, fearing that she would order him from the room. But at the instant of the touching of his lips, she threw her arm about his neck, and drew him down as a mermaiden draws her mortal lover into the depths, and in a wondering world of miraculous happiness he surrendered himself.
"Dearest, dearest," he said, raising himself to look at her.
"Ulick, Ulick," she said, "let me kiss you, I've longed such a while."