"Oh, that you can remind me of it--in this hour--!" cried the countess, with sorrowful reproach.
He looked almost threateningly into her eyes. The dark locks around his head seemed to stir like the bristling mane of a lion: "Woman, you do not know me! If you deceive me, you will betray the most sacred emotion ever felt by mortal man--and it will be terribly avenged. Then the flame you are kindling will consume either you or me, or both. You see that I am now a different man. Formerly you have beheld me only when curbed by the victorious power of my holy task. You have conjured up the spirits, now they can no longer be held in thrall--will you not be terrified by the might of a passion which is unknown to you people of the world, with your calm self-control?"
"I, terrified by you?" cried the proud woman in a tone of exultant rapture. "Oh, this is power, this is the very breath of the gods. Should I fear amid the element for which I longed--which was revealed to me in my own breast? Does the flame fear the fire? The Titaness dread the Titan? Ah, Zeus, hurl thy thunderbolt, and let the forest blaze as the victorious torch of nature at last released from her long bondage."
He sat down by her side, his fiery breath fanning her cheek. "Then you will try it, will give me the kiss I dared not take to-day?"
"Yes."
"But it will be a betrothal kiss."
"Yes."
He opened his arms, and as a black moth settles upon a fragrant tea-rose, hovering on its velvet wings above the dewy calyx, he bent his head to hers, shadowing her with his dark locks and pressed his first kiss upon Madeleine von Wildenau's quivering lips.
But such moments tempt the gods themselves, and Jupiter hovered over the pair, full of wrath, for he envied the Christian mortal the beautiful woman. He had heard her laughingly challenge him in the midst of the joy she had stolen from the gods, and the heavens darkened, the hurricane saddled the steeds of the storm, awaiting his beck, and down flashed the fire from the sky--a shrill cry rent the air, the highest tree in the forest was cleft asunder and the bridal torch lighted by Jupiter blazed aloft.
"The gods are averse to it," said Freyer, gloomily. "Defy them!" cried the countess, starting up; "they are powerless--we are in the hands of a Higher Ruler."