How beautiful she is. Shall he offer her his arm? No, no, no!
He is one of those warm and weak natures in whom passion in one moment drowns everything, annihilates, crushes everything, intellect, honor and duty.
He has more conscience than others, but not that prudent, warning conscience, which withholds one from a wrong deed, but only that malicious, accusing one which points the finger, grins and hurls sly insults in the face after the deed is done.
"If you wish to spare your mother a fright, we must hurry," says Felix, with the last remnant of prudence which is left in him.
They go on. Before their feet opens an abyss, barely ten feet broad; in its depths filters a small thread of water which the moonlight colors a bluish silver. At the edge of the abyss, curiously looking down into it, bending deeply down to it, grows a bush of wild roses, covered thickly with white blossoms, trembling slightly, like a living being; with outstretched wings it vibrates over the depths, as if it hesitated between the longing to fly up to the sacred mystery of heaven, and the desire to plunge down into the alluring enigma of the abyss.
A small plank leads over it, slippery and tottering. Felix strides across it quickly and then looks around for Linda.
There, in the middle of the board, trembling, her teeth set in her lip, stands Linda, and cannot advance. "I am giddy!" she gasps.
There are few more attractive things in the world than a pretty, frightened woman.
Felix rushes up to her, takes her in his arms and carries her over. All is forgotten, he holds her closely to him, his lips lose themselves in her loosened hair, burn on her forehead, seek her mouth, but then he suddenly pauses. The enormity of his deed occurs to him.
"For Heaven's sake pardon me!" cries he. Whereupon she replies with a naïve smile and tender glance: