Fink began in some agitation, "I must not, I can not leave without having spoken openly to you. I came here without any interest in the quiet life to which I had been so unaccustomed. I have here learned the worth and the happiness of a German home. You I have ever honored as the good spirit of the house. Soon after my arrival, you began to treat me with a distance of manner which I have always lamented. I now come to tell you how much my eyes and heart have clung to you. I feel that my life would be a happy one if I could henceforth ever hear your voice, and if your spirit could accompany mine along the paths of my future life."
Sabine became very pale, and retreated. "Say no more, Herr von Fink," said she, imploringly, raising her hand unconsciously, as if to avert what she foresaw.
"Nay, let me speak," rapidly continued he. "I should consider it the greatest happiness if I could take with me the conviction of not being indifferent to you. I have not the audacity to ask you to follow me at once into an uncertain life, but give me a hope that in a year I may return and ask you to become my wife."
"Do not return," said Sabine, motionless as a statue, and in a voice scarcely audible; "I implore you to say no more."
Her hands convulsively grasped the back of the chair next to her, and, supporting herself by it, she stood with bloodless cheeks, looking at her suitor through her tears with eyes so full of grief and tenderness that the wild-hearted man before her was thoroughly overcome, and lost all self-confidence—nay, forgot his own cause in his distress at her emotion, and his anxiety to soothe it.
"I grieve that I should thus have shocked you," said he; "forgive me, Sabine."
"Go! go!" implored Sabine, still standing as before.
"Let me not part from you without some comfort; give me an answer; the most painful were better than this silence."
"Then hear me," said Sabine, with unnatural calmness, while her breast heaved and her hands trembled; "I loved you from the first day of your arrival; like a childish girl, I listened with rapture to the tone of your voice, and was fascinated by all your lips uttered; but I have conquered the feeling. I have conquered it," she repeated. "I dare not be yours, for I should be miserable."
"But why—why?" inquired Fink, in genuine despair.