Richard.
Do you really want to?
Beata.
You can work wonders--but not that!
Richard.
(Draws out the letters, and opening one, begins to read it to her.) "Rossitsch, June 13th, 1881. Two o'clock in the morning."
Beata.
What is that?
Richard.
Listen. (Reading.) "I don't want to sleep, dearest. The night is too bright and my happiness too great. The moonlight lies on Likowa, and already the dawn shows red through the network of elms. The blood beats like a hammer in my temples--I scarcely know how I am going to bear the riches of my new life. Oh, how I pray God to let me live it out beside you--not as your wife, that would be too wild a dream!--but as an unseen influence at your side, faint as the moonlight which rests upon your sleep, or as the first glow of dawn that wakes you to new endeavour."