"Oh, why did we ever meet?" she murmured, turning her face up to the setting sun, so that it became suffused with a rosy glow. She sighed, but the sigh lost itself in a smile.
"As we are on the subject," he said, feeling that the conversation had taken a dangerous turn, but at a loss how to change it into another channel, "meeting had nothing to do with it. For a year or more we had associated without any harm coming of it, despite the old boy-and-girl flirtation behind us. We should have been more careful to keep our inclinations in hand, that's all. Rhaden left us too much alone. We had too many opportunities of strolling in the park after dark, and sitting in shady nooks. That's what did it ... that's what did it."
Half lying on the cushions, she propped her chin in her hands.
"I wonder how the idea first came into our heads?" she asked dreamily.
He shrugged his shoulders. "Can one say afterwards how such things happen?" he said. "It's like fever; no one knows how he gets it."
"I remember, though, how it began," she whispered, still gazing at the sun. "It was a July evening. Rhaden had something to do in the town.... We were in the arbour, under the cut cypresses. You have got one like it at Halewitz. Do you remember the arbour?"
Why did she ask? Till their dying hour, they were both bound to remember the place that had been the temple of their happiness and the origin of their damnation.
"It was dark all round us; we could scarcely see each other. Your cigar had gone out ... you wanted a light. .. I said, 'Let me help you,' and as I held the burning match to the end of your cigar, and you drew in the flame with a deep breath, you raised your hand and stroked my hand which held the match, three times, and just as it flickered up for the last time, our eyes met ... and then I knew ... knew that it would happen."
"You knew it already?"
She nodded; and as if it were the fading radiance of their past and vanished joy, the reflection of the sun, which had now sunk beneath the horizon, lay purple and mysterious on her face.