"Oh you--perhaps two."

"Two months!" I exclaimed.

"Two months is very long."

"You go beyond antiquity, madame."

"You see, you cannot stand the truth."

Wanda walked across the room and leaned back against the fireplace, watching me and resting one of her arms on the mantelpiece.

"What shall I do with you?" she began anew.

"Whatever you wish," I replied with resignation, "whatever will give you pleasure."

"How illogical!" she cried, "first you want to make me your wife, and then you offer yourself to me as something to toy with."

"Wanda--I love you."

"Now we are back to the place where we started. You love me, and want to make me your wife, but I don't want to enter into a new marriage, because I doubt the permanence of both my and your feelings."

"But if I am willing to take the risk with you?" I replied.

"But it also depends on whether I am willing to risk it with you,"

she said quietly. "I can easily imagine belonging to one man for my entire life, but he would have to be a whole man, a man who would dominate me, who would subjugate me by his inate strength, do you understand? And every man--I know this very well--as soon as he falls in love becomes weak, pliable, ridiculous. He puts himself into the woman's hands, kneels down before her. The only man whom I could love permanently would be he before whom I should have to kneel. I've gotten to like you so much, however, that I'll try it with you."

I fell down at her feet.

"For heaven's sake, here you are kneeling already," she said mockingly. "You are making a good beginning." When I had risen again she continued, "I will give you a year's time to win me, to convince me that we are suited to each other, that we might live together. If you succeed, I will become your wife, and a wife, Severin, who will conscientiously and strictly perform all her duties. During this year we will live as though we were married--"

My blood rose to my head.

In her eyes too there was a sudden flame--

"We will live together," she continued, "share our daily life, so that we may find out whether we are really fitted for each other. _I grant you all the rights of a husband, of a lover, of a friend._ Are you satisfied?"

"I suppose, I'll have to be?"

"You don't have to."

"Well then, I want to--"

"Splendid. That is how a man speaks. Here is my hand."

For ten days I have been with her every hour, except at night. All the time I was allowed to look into her eyes, hold her hands, listen to what she said, accompany her wherever she went.

My love seems to me like a deep, bottomless abyss, into which I subside deeper and deeper. There is nothing now which could save me from it.

This afternoon we were resting on the meadow at the foot of the Venus-statue. I plucked flowers and tossed them into her lap; she wound them into wreaths with which we adorned our G.o.ddess.

Suddenly Wanda looked at me so strangely that my senses became confused and pa.s.sion swept over my head like a conflagration. Losing command over myself, I threw my arms about her and clung to her lips, and she--she drew me close to her heaving breast.

"Are you angry?" I then asked her.

"I am never angry at anything that is natural--" she replied, "but _I_ am afraid you suffer."

"Oh, I am suffering frightfully."

"Poor friend!" she brushed my disordered hair back from my fore-head. "I hope it isn't through any fault of mine."

"No--" I replied,--"and yet my love for you has become a sort of madness. The thought that I might lose you, perhaps actually lose you, torments me day and night."

"But you don't yet possess me," said Wanda, and again she looked at me with that vibrant, consuming expression, which had already once before carried me away. Then she rose, and with her small transparent hands placed a wreath of blue anemones upon the ringletted white head of Venus. Half against my will I threw my arm around her body.

"I can no longer live without you, oh wonderful woman," I said.

"Believe me, believe only this once, that this time it is not a phrase, not a thing of dreams. I feel deep down in my innermost soul, that my life belongs inseparably with yours. If you leave me, I shall perish, go to pieces."

"That will hardly be necessary, for I love you," she took hold of my chin, "you foolish man!"

"But you will be mine only under conditions, while I belong to you unconditionally--"

"That isn't wise, Severin," she replied almost with a start. "Don't you know me yet, do you absolutely refuse to know me? I am good when I am treated seriously and reasonably, but when you abandon yourself too absolutely to me, I grow arrogant--"

"So be it, be arrogant, be despotic," I cried in the fulness of exaltation, "only be mine, mine forever." I lay at her feet, embracing her knees.

"Things will end badly, my friend," she said soberly, without moving.

"It shall never end," I cried excitedly, almost violently. "Only death shall part us. If you cannot be mine, all mine and for always, then _I want to be your slave_, serve you, suffer everything from you, if only you won't drive me away."

"Calm yourself," she said, bending down and kissing my forehead, "I am really very fond of you, but your way is not the way to win and hold me."

"I want to do everything, absolutely everything, that you want, only not to lose you," I cried, "only not that, I cannot bear the thought."

"Do get up."

I obeyed.

"You are a strange person," continued Wanda. "You wish to possess me at any price?"

"Yes, at any price."

"But of what value, for instance, would that be?"--She pondered; a lurking uncanny expression entered her eyes--"If I no longer loved you, if I belonged to another."

A shudder ran through me. I looked at her She stood firmly and confident before me, and her eyes disclosed a cold gleam.

"You see," she continued, "the very thought frightens you." A beautiful smile suddenly illuminated her face.