Then she threw both arms round his neck and pillowed her head against his breast. Thus she stood for a few minutes, murmuring--
"Now I have got you all to myself. But you must be very quiet," she added quickly, in a warning tone, "for some one is sleeping not far off."
He nodded.
"And do you love me?"
She saw his face change, and felt how he trembled. She pressed her hands against her breast, breathing rapidly.
"I must do it now," she said to herself. It was no matter whether he was asleep over there or not.
She took a box of matches from the bedside table, and said, smiling--
"Wait a minute, dearest. I have something to attend to."
She disappeared, softly bolting the door as she went.
Leo still stood on the same spot. "Here I am, at my goal," he thought. Then he let his eyes wander round the room in dull curiosity. He looked at the lamp hanging from the ceiling, and noticed that the silken, befringed shade was rose-pink. At Fichtkampen it had been blue. The difference impressed itself on his mind, which seemed incapable of taking in anything else. He wished that she would come back so that he needn't stand there feeling so stupid and wretched. Then he remembered the smiling promises with which she had parted from him the other day. A pang of anxiety, mingled with a weak hope to which he could not give a name, overwhelmed him. It seemed to him as if she had the power of paralysing his limbs, and draining the marrow from his bones.