"Yes, that is true!" cried Heinrich; "let us enjoy the moment while we may." And it was Henri who now threw himself upon the sofa beside Cornelia and drew her closely to him.
Cornelia looked at him in astonishment. His eyes were beaming with ardent feeling; a warmer color tinged his cheeks; his mouth, half-pouted for a kiss was irresistibly alluring. "It often seems as if you changed places with some one, and in an instant became an entirely different man. I never saw such sudden alterations of mood."
"Ah, do not speak! kiss me!" pleaded Henri. "Darling, how I have longed for those lips! Many a night have I tossed as if in a fever, thirsting, yearning for you. Did you think of me when you went to rest?"
"Yes, a thousand times. I have never fallen asleep without calling 'Good-night, Heinrich!' and the words became my nightly prayer. I shall never forget it."
"How beautiful! What time do you say it?"
"At eleven: when I am in bed."
"In future I shall always say, 'Pleasant dreams, Cornelia!' You will remember it, won't you, my darling?"
"Of course I shall," she whispered, pressing her cheek close to his.
Light, scarcely audible footsteps approached. Cornelia started up. "Veronica is coming!"
The door slowly opened, and she entered, kindly as ever, but pale, as if there was not a drop of blood in her sunken features. Her slender figure seemed still more shrunken, and there was not a tinge of color about the ghostly apparition except the light-blue ribbon upon her white cap. The lovely eyes were more hollow, more lustreless, than in former days; the silvery curls drooped more negligently about her face. Henri perceived a change in her, and as it soon became evident that there was no alteration in her intellectual powers it must be a bodily one. In such delicate equable natures all secret changes give very faint external tokens of their existence, and it requires a watchful, practiced eye to detect them. Cornelia was too mach preoccupied with her own feelings, the slight, gradual alterations in Veronica's appearance did not attract her attention; but Henri, who had not seen her for a long time, noticed them at once.