“It should be enough,” I said.
“Enough for me whose youth is over,” he went on, “but not for you. Life is still before you, and you will perhaps seek happiness, and perhaps find it, in something different. You think now that this is happiness, because you love me.”
“You are wrong,” I said; “I have always desired just that quiet domestic life and prized it. And you only say just what I have thought.”
He smiled.
“So you think, my dear; but that is not enough for you. You have youth and beauty,” he repeated thoughtfully.
But I was angry because he disbelieved me and seemed to cast my youth and beauty in my teeth.
“Why do you love me then?” I asked angrily; “for my youth or for myself?”
“I don’t know, but I love you,” he answered, looking at me with his attentive and attractive gaze.
I did not reply and involuntarily looked into his eyes. Suddenly a strange thing happened to me: first I ceased to see what was around me; then his face seemed to vanish till only the eyes were left, shining over against mine; next the eyes seemed to be in my own head, and then all became confused—I could see nothing and was forced to shut my eyes, in order to break loose from the feeling of pleasure and fear which his gaze was producing in me …
The day before our wedding day, the weather cleared up towards evening. The rains which had begun in summer gave place to clear weather, and we had our first autumn evening, bright and cold. It was a