He looked up into her face—up at the quivering bend of her lips, up until his eyes found hers, drowned in tears and almost covered by their fluttering lids—and into his glance flashed a subjugating power, an irresistible force.
She attempted to follow the line of her argument, a moment before so clear, but the word "renunciation" died away in a sigh.
She helplessly returned his look.
And the gigantic statues increased her bewilderment; for the one thought that seemed to leap behind the statues' staring eyes, between their huge and rigid lips, in the hollow of their stony breasts, was the naturalness of loving wildly.
Emil dropped his lips on her wrist.
Releasing the hand, she sought to repulse him, but instead, she clutched his hair with a tenderness almost convulsive.
"Oh, you are killing me!" she moaned.
Drawing himself up, he tried to take her in his arms; but with sudden violence, she forced his head downward.
"Oh, you torture me!" she panted.
He grasped her hands;—and once more, before her drowning sight, wavered the statues. In a delirious flash she realized the similarity of their fate. Like them, she was destined to stand forth under an open sky, testifying to a command contrary to nature, but which had been laid upon her kind from time immemorial.