Then she felt her arm clasped in his trembling fingers. His eyes burned into hers.
"Who are you?" he asked.
She felt a little giddy. "Who am I? ... I am a woman who loves you as you have never been loved by anyone."
He passed his hands over her shoulders in a grateful caress. "I must make you understand me clearly," he said. "I don't want to force your confidence. But when two beings have stood as near to each other as we have during the last hour, they naturally want to know everything there is to know. I have never met a woman in the least like you before. I am quite ignorant, for the one or two little experiences I have had count as nothing. In Rome a baker's daughter was in love with me, but she ran away with a marquis. In my student days I had a few other affairs of the kind. That is all. I have been in society very little. And now, all at once, here I am with you in my arms--you, the most glorious and perfect thing I have ever seen in my life! A woman who hardly seems to belong to this world at all.... I cannot take my eyes off you in your blue peplus.... You stand there the image of an antique statue, a masterpiece of Lysippus or Praxiteles come to life. And I am to call that mine? Why, the mere thought is sheer tragedy. We are both making for a precipice without an attempt to save ourselves."
"Why should we?" she cried, throwing back her head in ecstasy, as if she were tossing back a bacchante's wild locks. "We love each other, and nothing else matters."
He sank into the chair next her, and with dry tearless sobs buried his face in his two hands. She knelt down in front of him, and bending forward planted little fugitive kisses on his clenched hands.
"No!" he cried, springing up again, "this must not be. I must not let myself be driven into a false position. You may think as you do, and be willing to sacrifice all that you have and are--very well. But I, who am to accept such infinite goodness--I must speak out, so that you will be quite clear for whom you are doing it. I must not leave open a shadow of a possibility of your being misled. I am a poor young chap living on his uncle's bounty. I have no prospects, for my great work is still in embryo, and the articles I write are nothing to speak of. I have still to win by unremitting toil a pied-à-terre in life. It may take me ten years.... I could never submit to being supported by you. You must think what you will of me, but I say now, once for all, that a marriage between us is out of the question."
At first she could hardly believe her ears. Here was someone so-unworldly, so naïve and ingenuous, as actually to mention marriage seriously in Lilly Czepanek's corner drawing-room! Then she laughed shrilly, in scorn of her shameless life.
"Do you take me for an adventuress who inveigles men into her net?" she cried, jumping to her feet. "Do you take me for a harpy?"--Frau Jula's expression came back to her--"a harpy who tries to catch every person she chances to meet? Am I such a miserable wretch?"
He stared at her face with an astonished, uncomprehending glance.