"'Now he will go up to her,' I said to myself, 'will take her hands and look long into her eyes. "Do you still love me?" he will ask; and she, blushing rosy red, will sink with tear-dimmed gaze upon his breast.'
"I closed my eyes and sighed. My temples were throbbing; I felt more and more how my fancies intoxicated me, and then I went on picturing to myself how he would drop on his knees before her and, with ardent looks, stammer forth glowing declarations of love and faithfulness.
"I knew by heart everything that he was saying to her at this moment, no less than what she was answering. I could have acted as prompter to them both. When the half-hour was over, I held counsel with myself whether I should grant them a few moments longer. I was at present their fate and as such I smilingly showered my favours upon them.
"'Let them drain their cup of bliss to the last drop!' said I, and resolved to take a walk through the garden yet. But curiosity overpowered me so that I turned back half-way.
"Softly I crept up to the door, but hardly did I find courage to turn the handle. The thought of what I was about to see almost took my breath away.
"And what did I see now, after all?
"There he still sat in his sofa-corner as before, and had smoked his cigar down to a tiny stump; but in her embroidery there was a flower which had not been there before.
"'Why do you shrug your shoulders so contemptuously?' asked Martha, and Robert added, 'It seems I do not meet with her ladyship's gracious approval.'
"'So,' thought I, 'for all my kindness I get sneers into the bargain,' and went out slamming the door after me. That same night, I, foolish young creature that I was, lay awake till nearly morning, and pictured to myself how I, Olga Bremer, would have behaved had I been in the place of those two. First I was Robert, then Martha; I felt, I spoke, I acted for them, and through the silence of my bedroom there sounded the passionate whisperings of ardent, world-despising love.
"As things were much too straightforward to please me, I invented a number of additional obstacles--our parents' refusal, nocturnal meetings at the frontier trench, surprise by the Cossacks, imprisonment, paternal, maledictions, flight, and finally death together in the waves; for only hereby, so it seemed to me, could true love be worthily sealed and confirmed.