“But I am not lying to you.”
She knew that I could not prove her lie, and that all my heavy massive structure of torturing thought would crumble at one word from her, even one lying word. I waited for it—and it came forth from her lips, sparkling on the surface with the colours of truth, but dark in its innermost depths:
“I love thee! Am not I all thine?”
We were far from the town, and the snow-clad plain looked in at the dark windows. Upon it was darkness, and around it was darkness, gross, motionless, silent, but the plain shone with its own latent coruscation, like the face of a corpse in the dark. In the over-heated room only one candle was burning, and on its reddening flame there appeared the white reflection of the deathlike plain.
“However sad the truth may be, I want to know it. Maybe I shall die when I know it, but death rather than ignorance of the truth. In your kisses and embraces I feel a lie. In your eyes I see it. Tell me the truth and I will leave you forever,” said I.
But she was silent. Her coldly searching look penetrated my inmost depths, and drawing out my soul, regarded it with strange curiosity.
And I cried: “Answer, or I will kill you!”
“Yes, do!” she quietly replied; “sometimes life is so wearisome. But the truth is not to be extracted by threat.”
And then I knelt to her. Clasping her hand I wept, and prayed for pity and the truth.
“Poor fellow!” said she, putting her hand on my head, “poor fellow!”