"My Master, my salvation," she sobbed, throwing herself upon his breast. He clasped her with a divine gesture of love in his embrace.
"Oh, God she has flown hither like a frightened dove and nestled in my breast. Poor dove, I will conceal and protect you from every rude breeze, from every base touch of the world! Build your nest in my heart--here you shall rest in the peace of God!" He pressed her head close to his heart.
"How you tremble, dove! May I call you so?"
"Oh, forever!"
"Are you wearied by your long flight? Poor dove! Have you fluttered hither to me across the wild surges of the world, to bring the olive branch, the token of reconciliation, which makes my peace with things temporal and eternal? And must I now thrust you from me, saying as Christ said to Magdalene! 'Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father?' Shall I drive you forth again into this chaos, that the faithful wings which bore you on the right way may droop exhausted till you perish in the billows of the world?" He clasped her still more closely: "Oh, God! This cannot be Thy will! But I think I understand Thee, Omnipotent One--Thou hast entrusted this soul to me, and I will guard it for Thee loyally!"
It was an hour of sacred happiness. Her head rested on his breast. Not a leaf stirred on the boughs. The dense shadow of the beeches surrounded them, separating them from the world as if the universe contained naught save this one spot of earth, and the dream of this moment.
"Tell me one thing," she whispered, "only one, and I will suffer, atone, and purchase this hour of Heaven by any sacrifice: Do you love me?"
He looked at her, his whole soul in his eyes. "Must I tell you so?" he asked mournfully. "What can it serve you to put your hand into the wound in my heart, and see how deep it is? You cannot cure it. Have you not felt, from the first moment, that some irresistible spell drew me to you, forcing me, the recluse, to come to you again and yet again? What was it that drove me from my couch early this morning and sent me hither to your closed house and deserted garden? What was it save love?"
"Ever since four o'clock I have wandered restlessly about with my eyes fixed on the shutters of your room, till the impetuous longing of my soul roused you and drew you from your warm bed into the chill morning air. Come, you are shivering, let me warm you, nestle in my arms and feel the glow of my heart."
He sat down on the bench under the arbor, and--he knew not how it happened--she clung to him like a child and he could not repulse her, he could not! She stroked his long black locks with her little soft hand and rested her head against his cheek--she was the very embodiment of innocence, simplicity, girlish artlessness. And in low murmurs she poured out her whole heart to him as a child confides in its father. Without reserve, she told him all the bitter sorrow of her whole life--a life which had never known either love or happiness! Having lost her mother when a mere child, she had been educated by a cold-hearted governess and a pessimistic tutor. Her father, wholly absorbed by the whirl of fashionable life, had cared nothing for her, and when scarcely out of the school-room had compelled her to marry a rich old man with whom for eight years existence was one long torment. Then, in mortal fear lest her listener would not forgive her, yet faithful to the truth, she confessed also how her eager soul, yearning for love, had striven to find some compensation, rebelling against a law which recognized the utmost immorality as moral, till sin itself seemed virtue compared to the wrong of such a bond. But as the forbidden draught did not quench her thirst, a presentiment came to her that she was longing for that spring of which Christ said: "But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst!" This had brought her here, and here had been opened the purifying, redeeming fount of life and love.