He raised his eyes from the ground, but still turning them away from me, said:  “Besought by that plea I will answer your rash question.  Yes, you are the sole, the agonizing cause of all I suffer, of all I must suffer untill I die.  Now, beware!  Be silent!  Do not urge me to your destruction.  I am struck by the storm, rooted up, laid waste:  but you can stand against it; you are young and your passions are at peace.  One word I might speak and then you would be implicated in my destruction; yet that word is hovering on my lips.  Oh!  There is a fearful chasm; but I adjure you to beware!”

“Ah, dearest friend!” I cried, “do not fear!  Speak that word; it will bring peace, not death.  If there is a chasm our mutual love will give us wings to pass it, and we shall find flowers, and verdure, and delight on the other side.”  I threw myself at his feet, and took his hand, “Yes, speak, and we shall be happy; there will no longer be doubt, no dreadful uncertainty; trust me, my affection will soothe your sorrow; speak that word and all danger will be past, and we shall love each other as before, and for ever.”

He snatched his hand from me, and rose in violent disorder:  “What do you mean?  You know not what you mean.  Why do you bring me out, and torture me, and tempt me, and kill me—­Much happier would [it] be for you and for me if in your frantic curiosity you tore my heart from my breast and tried to read its secrets in it as its life’s blood was dropping from it.  Thus you may console me by reducing me to nothing—­but your words I cannot bear; soon they will make me mad, quite mad, and then I shall utter strange words, and you will believe them, and we shall be both lost for ever.  I tell you I am on the very verge of insanity; why, cruel girl, do you drive me on:  you will repent and I shall die.”

When I repeat his words I wonder at my pertinacious folly; I hardly know what feelings resis[t]lessly impelled me.  I believe it was that coming out with a determination not to be repulsed I went right forward to my object without well weighing his replies:  I was led by passion and drew him with frantic heedlessness into the abyss that he so fearfully avoided—­I replied to his terrific words:  “You fill me with affright it is true, dearest father, but you only confirm my resolution to put an end to this state of doubt.  I will not be put off thus:  do you think that I can live thus fearfully from day to day—­the sword in my bosom yet kept from its mortal wound by a hair—­a word!—­I demand that dreadful word; though it be as a flash of lightning to destroy me, speak it.

“Alas!  Alas!  What am I become?  But a few months have elapsed since I believed that I was all the world to you; and that there was no happiness or grief for you on earth unshared by your Mathilda—­your child:  that happy time is no longer, and what I most dreaded in this world is come upon me.  In the despair of my heart I see what you cannot conceal:  you no longer love me.  I adjure you, my father, has not an unnatural passion seized upon your heart?  Am I not the most miserable worm that crawls?  Do I not embrace your knees, and you most cruelly repulse me?  I know it—­I see it—­you hate me!”