"Really! Will you really be good to me?"
"Of course, my child."
He stooped, and was going to kiss her on the forehead; but as at this moment she moved her head sideways, it happened that their lips rested on each other.
"How innocently she lets herself be kissed," he thought.
And then suddenly she jumped up, and tore out of the room as fast as her clattering pattens would permit.
He ran both hands through his hair, and strode like one possessed up and down the uneven tiles of the kitchen.
A childlike, foolish blissfulness filled his soul. He felt as if he was again fifteen years old, in jackets and with curly hair, coming home triumphant from his first rendezvous, when Felicitas had given him her first kiss.
Felicitas!
Like the stab of a knife the thought of her pursued him. But the next minute he laughed out loud, and raised his hands in proud confidence to the ceiling. The kiss of the innocent child had opened founts of youthful gladness within him.
If he dared hope one day to win this young heart for his own, then all would be made right again. Then the burden of guilt, borne for years, would fall of itself. Then what filled his life with vague uneasiness, and made him sometimes not know himself, would yield to peace and a happy state of mind. It would die away--die like that flickering, greedy, leaping flame, which now, at last, had sunk, and lay at rest in a dull red-hot glow. And when he turned round he saw that the grand spectre which had cast its shadow, hatchet in hand on the wall, had gone too.