"Felicitas!" he exclaimed, seizing both her hands.
"Could there be a more blissful fate for me, beloved," she went on in a whisper, "than to die in your arms?"
He held her close to him. A feeling of intoxication, which he interpreted as a longing for death, took shuddering possession of his soul. It was succeeded by a damping mistrust--mistrust of himself, and much more of her.
"Are you serious?" he asked. "For I tell you plainly this time it will be no joke--we shall not drink toothache drops!"
"How can you?" she pouted; and then, with a smile of rapture, she added, "I will be yours ... yours. If not in life, at least in death!"
"Reflect on it well, Felicitas," he warned her again. "Remember, that it is not only the bald fact that we die. It may cost us no great pain to leave this scurvy world. But we shall forfeit in doing it all that man holds precious. We shall be cast like a dog into a nameless grave. They will spit at our memory."
"What will that matter to us?" she asked, smiling. "We shall know nothing about it."
"Then you wish to die?"
"Yes, in your arms I wish to die," she breathed, and laid her head back with eyes blissfully closed, so that the evening light illuminated the fairness of her face.
"That's how she will look," thought he.