"What!" cried Wilfrid in despair, "the riches of Art, the wealth of the world, the splendor of a court——"
She checked him by a mere curl of her lips, and said:
"Beings more powerful than you are have offered me more."
"Well, have you no soul, then, that you are not fascinated by the prospect of consoling a great man who will sacrifice everything to dwell with you in a little home by the side of a lake?"
"Why," said she, "I am loved with a boundless love."
"By whom?" cried Wilfrid, going towards Seraphita with a frenzied gesture, as if to fling her into the foaming falls of the Sieg.
She looked at him; his arm dropped; and she pointed to Minna, who came running down, all rose and white, and as pretty as the flowers she carried in her hand.
"My child!" said Seraphitus, going forward to meet her.
Wilfrid stood on the edge of the cliff as motionless as a statue, lost in thought, longing to cast himself into the flow of the torrent, like one of the fallen trees that passed under his eyes and vanished in the abyss beneath.
"I gathered them for you," said Minna, giving the nose-gay to the being she adored. "One of them—this one," said she, picking out a particular blossom, "is like the flower we gathered on the Falberg."