“I have already reigned,” said Seraphita, coldly.

The words fell as the axe of a skilful woodman falls at the root of a young tree and brings it down at a single blow.  Men alone can comprehend the rage that a woman excites in the soul of a man when, after showing her his strength, his power, his wisdom, his superiority, the capricious creature bends her head and says, “All that is nothing”; when, unmoved, she smiles and says, “Such things are known to me,” as though his power were nought.

“What!” cried Wilfrid, in despair, “can the riches of art, the riches of worlds, the splendors of a court—­”

She stopped him by a single inflexion of her lips, and said, “Beings more powerful than you have offered me far more.”

“Thou hast no soul,” he cried,—­“no soul, if thou art not persuaded by the thought of comforting a great man, who is willing now to sacrifice all things to live beside thee in a little house on the shores of a lake.”

“But,” she said, “I am loved with a boundless love.”

“By whom?” cried Wilfrid, approaching Seraphita with a frenzied movement, as if to fling her into the foaming basin of the Sieg.

She looked at him and slowly extended her arm, pointing to Minna, who now sprang towards her, fair and glowing and lovely as the flowers she held in her hand.

“Child!” said Seraphitus, advancing to meet her.

Wilfrid remained where she left him, motionless as the rock on which he stood, lost in thought, longing to let himself go into the torrent of the Sieg, like the fallen trees which hurried past his eyes and disappeared in the bosom of the gulf.

“I gathered them for you,” said Minna, offering the bunch of saxifrages to the being she adored.  “One of them, see, this one,” she added, selecting a flower, “is like that you found on the Falberg.”

Seraphitus looked alternately at the flower and at Minna.

“Why question me?  Dost thou doubt me?”

“No,” said the young girl, “my trust in you is infinite.  You are more beautiful to look upon than this glorious nature, but your mind surpasses in intellect that of all humanity.  When I have been with you I seem to have prayed to God.  I long—­”

“For what?” said Seraphitus, with a glance that revealed to the young girl the vast distance which separated them.

“To suffer in your stead.”

“Ah, dangerous being!” cried Seraphitus in his heart.  “Is it wrong, oh my God! to desire to offer her to Thee?  Dost thou remember, Minna, what I said to thee up there?” he added, pointing to the summit of the Ice-Cap.

“He is terrible again,” thought Minna, trembling with fear.

The voice of the Sieg accompanied the thoughts of the three beings united on this platform of projecting rock, but separated in soul by the abysses of the Spiritual World.

“Seraphitus! teach me,” said Minna in a silvery voice, soft as the motion of a sensitive plant, “teach me how to cease to love you.  Who could fail to admire you; love is an admiration that never wearies.”