Etait-ce donc un ange, une femme,
Qui venait d’embraser mon âme?
Las! Je ne sais encore.… Mais depuis ce beau jour
Je sais que j’aime d’un pur amour.”
She felt once again her lover’s arm around her waist and his voice she could hear whispering to her softly, and saying:
“Anna, my darling, I love you, I love you more dearly than words can express, more dearly than my mother, than my sister, more dearly than my own life!”
Oh! those precious words! Ah! that heavenly moment! And then, dreaming on, she heard:
“Tell me, Anna, tell me. Do you love me, dearest? I know I have already had your answer; but repeat that word once again, now that we are here alone—now that we are here, far from the noise of the world—repeat that little word now, as we are standing under the eye of God himself!”
She had treasured up those words. They were engraven as it were, in her heart. Then she could feel the kiss—the first kiss of love which set the seal to her murmured reply. She could feel—
But, as at Santjoemeh, so here again, she was destined to be roughly startled out of her reverie. She fancied she could hear the voice of her mother. She would have cur— No, no, not that, she had not the heart to curse anyone; but she cast one reproachful look upwards to heaven, as she felt how so much bliss had been turned to misery and woe. The pleasant dream had vanished.