All this is very banal, very “missish.” Yes, I know, I know. But now and then it is simply beyond my power to keep down, simply overwhelming. For the time assigned to me, the wonderful time of meeting with one whom I love, fled into the past so long, so long ago!
Ah, it has come, that time! It came yesterday. I had already felt it in the air for many a day; it was in Martha’s eyes; my own heart told me. And while I yearned for it constantly, yet did I fear it like a sentence of death.
Having returned long after Martha had fallen asleep, he noticed that there was a light in my room, and tapped gently. I did not answer: nevertheless he came in.
“How late you have stayed up reading!” he said in a whisper. And then, seating himself on the couch beside me, he remained silent.
Covering my eyes with my hands, I let my head droop as low as to his knees, and in an instant was possessed with a mad, frenzied effervescence of expectancy. I shivered all over as with the ague; then shook all over with soundless laughter. Something was leaping up in my breast, palpitating in my very throat, in my brain, in my hands that were covering my eyes.... Had this unparalleled excitement lasted but one moment more I should have cried out aloud with terror and agony.
Then in an instant I grew quiet, overwhelmed with a sense of sudden numbness: and I let my head droop yet lower. Witold bent over me, and kissed my hair and shoulders. And then he raised up my head, and showered kisses on my eyes and mouth and throat.
Not one word of love did we speak. Already, long before, we had understood one another. But there were a thousand thoughts rushing through my brain.
He bent his marvellously beautiful head down to my knees, and whispered low some few strange inaudible words—words of incantation, words of magic: he could afford to be humble, for he was like a king who knows how mighty he is and how supreme. And then his lips were very red, as on fire....
All at once I shook myself free with a hissing intake of the breath, and gently extricated myself from his embrace.
“What, my Queen of the Icy Caverns!” he said in sport, with his eyes fixed upon mine. “Has some thought of death come to make you afraid?”