"No, no," she stammered.
He motioned her to go now, and again became absorbed in the problem of breathing.
Mary took up the hymnal.
"You are to read a song of death," she said to herself, for her promise must be kept. And as though she had not understood her own admonition, she repeated: "You are to read a song of death."
But her hearing was morbidly alert, and while the golden figures on the book danced a ghostly dance before her eyes, she heard again what she desired to hear. It was like the whispering of the wind against a forbidden gate. She caught words:
"Je t'aime—follement—j'en mourrai—je t'adore—mon amour—mon amour."
Mary closed her eyes. It seemed to her again as though hot waves streamed over her. And she had lost shame, too.
For there was something in all that which silenced reproach, which made this monstrous deed comprehensible, even natural. If one was so mad with love, if one felt that one could die of it!
So that existed, and was not only the lying babble of romances?
And her spirit returned and compared her own experience of love with what she witnessed now.