'
She did not answer in words, but reached out her hand to him
quickly. He took it; and as the smooth fingers settled and nestled
in his, love ran to and fro between them in tender and transforming
currents.
'Seraphina,' he cried, 'O, forget the past! Let me serve and help
you; let me be your servant; it is enough for me to serve you and to
be near you; let me be near you, dear - do not send me away.' He
hurried his pleading like the speech of a frightened child. 'It is
not love,' he went on; 'I do not ask for love; my love is enough . .
.'
'Otto!' she said, as if in pain.
He looked up into her face. It was wrung with the very ecstasy of
tenderness and anguish; on her features, and most of all in her
changed eyes, there shone the very light of love.
'Seraphina?' he cried aloud, and with a sudden, tuneless voice,
'Seraphina?'
'Look round you at this glade,' she cried, 'and where the leaves are
coming on young trees, and the flowers begin to blossom. This is
where we meet, meet for the first time; it is so much better to
forget and to be born again. O what a pit there is for sins - God's
mercy, man's oblivion!'
'Seraphina,' he said, 'let it be so, indeed; let all that was be
merely the abuse of dreaming; let me begin again, a stranger. I
have dreamed, in a long dream, that I adored a girl unkind and
beautiful; in all things my superior, but still cold, like ice.
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