"And can nothing—nothing,—destroy this love you have for me?" she faltered.
He took her yielding form in his arms. He drew her closer and closer to his heart.
"Nothing,—nothing,—nothing."
"I love you—Otto—" she whispered deliriously.
"To the end, dearest,—to the end!"
From a tavern at the foot of the hill the sounds of high revelry were borne up to them. The air was filled with the odour of dead leaves and dying creation, that subtle premonition of the end to come.
"And you have anxiously waited my coming?" she said, hiding her face in his arms.
"Oh, Stephania! The hour-glass, with which passion measures a lover's impatience, is a burning torch to his heart."
Supreme stillness intervened again.
Stephania raised her head like a deer in covert, listening for the hunters, listening for the baying of the hounds, coming nearer and nearer. Gladly at this moment would she have given her life to undo what she had done. But it was too late. Even this expiation would not avail! There was nothing now to do, but to nerve herself for that supreme moment, when all would be severed between them for aye and ever; when she would stand before him the embodiment of deception; when he would spurn her as one spurns the reptile, that repays the caressing hand with its deadly sting; when he would curse her perhaps,—cast from him for ever the woman who had cut the thread of the life he had laid at her feet—and all, for what?