"I think it better we should wait, dear. This is a blind, sudden desire on your part. I mustn't take advantage of it. You pity me, fear for me, and you have known so few other girls. It's generosity, chivalry, not love for poor little me. O, we mustn't, we mustn't. And then—you might change."
"Change! I'll never, never change," I pleaded. "I'll always be yours, absolutely, wholly yours, little girl; body and soul, to make or to mar, for ever and ever and ever."
"Well, it seems so sudden, so burning, so intense, your love, dear. I'm afraid, I'm afraid. Maybe it's not the kind that lasts. Maybe you'll tire. I'm not worth it, indeed I'm not. I'm only a poor ignorant girl. If there were others near, you would never think of me."
"Berna," I said, "if you were among a thousand, and they were the most adorable in all the world, I would pass over them all and turn with joy and gratitude to you. Then, if I were an Emperor on a throne, and you the humblest in all that throng, I would raise you up beside me and call you 'Queen.'"
"Ah, no," she said sadly, "you were wise once. I saw it afterwards. Better wait one year."
"Oh, my dearest," I reproached her, "once you offered yourself to me under any conditions. Why have you changed?"
"I don't know. I'm bitterly ashamed of that. Never speak of it again."
She went on very quietly, full of gentle patience.
"You know, I've been thinking a great deal since then. In the long, long days and longer nights, when I waited here in misery, hoping always you would come to me, I had time to reflect, to weight your words. I remember them all: 'love that means life and death, that great dazzling light, that passion that would raise to heaven or drag to hell.' You have awakened the woman in me; I must have a love like that."
"You have, my precious; you have, indeed."