“No,” cried he, almost rudely.  “I will not let you.  You ask what is impossible.  I were a fool if I were thus madly to cast the happiness away which I would fain purchase with my heart’s blood.  Twice have I risked my life to see you, to be able to kneel for one happy, undisturbed hour at your feet, and gaze on you, and intoxicate myself with that gaze.  And now you ask that I shall voluntarily give up my happiness and you!”

“My happiness! my happiness! yes, even my life I ask you to preserve by letting me go hence, and return to my father’s house,” cried Elise, eagerly.

As she perceived that he shook his head in refusal, and met his wild, passionate looks, reading in them that she might expect no mercy from him, her anger flashed forth.  Imploringly she raised her arms to heaven, and her voice sounded full and powerful:  “Feodor, I swear to you by God in heaven, and the memory of my mother, that I will only become the wife of that man whom I follow of my free will out of the house of my father.  I am capable of leaving my father’s house; but it must be my own free choice, my free determination.”

“No,” said Feodor, wildly; “I will not let you go.  You are mine, and you shall remain.”

Elise drew nearer to him with bashful tenderness.  “You must let me go now, in order one of these days to demand your pure wife from out her father’s house,” said she.  There was something so touching, so confiding in her manner that Feodor, against his will, felt himself overcome by it; but even while submitting to this fascination he was almost ashamed of himself, and deep sadness filled his soul.

Silently they stood opposite to each other, Elise looking at him with tenderness, yet with fear—­he his head bowed, wrestling with his own heart.  Suddenly this silence was interrupted by a loud and violent knocking at the door.  The voices of his wild companions and mad comrades were calling out loudly Feodor’s name, and demanding, with vehement impetuosity, the opening of the closed door.  Feodor turned pale.  The thought that his Elise, this young, innocent, and modest girl, should be exposed to the insolent gaze of his riotous companions, irritated him.

Casting his angry glances around the room to seek for a hiding-place in which to conceal Elise, he perceived that this was in vain, that no escape was possible.  Sadly he sank his head upon his breast, and sighed.  Elise understood him; she comprehended her disconsolate and Desperate position.

“There is then no place where I can hide myself?” said she in despair.  “Shame awaits me.  The whole world will know that I am here!”

Outside the officers raged still louder, and demanded with more violent cries the opening of the door.  Feodor still looked around him for a secret place.  Nowhere was there a possibility of hiding her, or letting her escape unnoticed.  His infuriated companions threatened to break the door in.