So he thought, but he did not speak. And now he could think of nothing but the moment when he could tell her that it was but a question in all innocence—a trial of her love.
"It is because I love you as I do," she said, "that I could not do it. We have been so happy—but that would be something strange between us. And now that you are going away…." She stopped, and the two looked at each other sorrowfully. It was as if already something strange had crept between them, as if they had hurt each other unwittingly, and suffered at the thought.
* * * * *
Day by day their parting drew nearer, the sun was veiled in a dreary mist.
Then one day she came to him, strangely moved, and clung to him, slight and yielding as the drooping curtains of the birch, swayed by the wind. Clung to him, threw her arms warmly round his neck, and looked into his eyes with a new light in her own.
"What—what is it?" he asked, with emotion, hovering between fear and a strange delight.
"Olof—I am … I can say it now…."
A tumult of joy rose up in him at her words. He clasped her to him in a fervent embrace, and opened his lips to tell her the secret at last. But his heart beat all too violently, a hand seemed clutching his throat, and he could not utter a word, but crushed her closer to him, and pressed his lips to hers.
Drawn two ways, he seemed, and now but one; all thought of the other vanished utterly. His breast was almost bursting with a desperate regret; he could not speak, and would not even if he could.
And then, as he felt the pressure of her embrace return his own, regret was drowned in an ecstasy of surrender.