"Now you are happy," he whispered. "I am here, I have come back and I am yours for life. But you must be calm, you have given me a great fright. You must not excite yourself, nor wander on any account from the straight path of your life. I shall cause you no more trouble, but you must promise me to be calm and good, as you are now."
He felt her hands tremble and struggle between his own; he divined that she was already beginning to rebel and he held them tightly, as he would have liked to hold her soul imprisoned.
"Dear Agnes, listen! You will never know all I have suffered to-day, but it was necessary. I stripped off all the outward shell of me, all that was impure, and I scourged myself until I bled. But now here I am, yours, yours, but as God wills that I should be yours, in spirit.... You see," he went on, speaking slowly and laboriously, as though dragging his words up painfully from his inmost depths and offering them to her, "it seems to me that we have loved each other for years and years, that we have rejoiced and suffered the one for the other, even unto hatred, even unto death. And all the tempests of the sea and all its implacable life are within us. Agnes, soul of my soul, what wouldst thou have of me greater than that which I can give thee, my soul itself?"
He stopped short. He felt that she did not understand, she could not understand. And he beheld her ever more detached from him, as life from death; but for this very reason he loved her still, yea, more than ever, as one loves life that is dying.
She slowly raised her head from his shoulder and looked him in the face with eyes grown hostile again.
"Now you listen to me," she said, "and tell me no more lies. Are we or are we not going away together as we settled last night? We cannot go on living here, in this way. That is certain!... That is certain!" she repeated with rising anger, after a moment of painful silence. "If we are to live together we must go away at once, this very night. I have money, you know, it is my own. And your mother and my brothers and every one else will excuse us afterwards when they see that we only wanted to live according to the truth. We cannot go on living like this, no, we cannot!"
"Agnes!"
"Answer me quick! Yes or no?"
"I cannot go away with you."
"Ah—then why have you come back?... Leave me! Get away, leave me!"