Gabriel supped with us, and we were exceedingly merry; not that I was necessarily merry, not being sad,—­indeed, I was neither the one nor the other, but my heart was dead, and I let my body do as it would.  I remember looking hard at Gabriel once, and saying to myself, “After all, he will admire me for this much more than I deserve; after all, I do not love him so much as I imagined.”

After supper I played some while on the piano.  Gabriel and Constance sat very far apart, but I should not have felt it had they sat together.  At ten o’clock I left off.

“Gabriel,” said I, “I shall turn you out a little earlier than usual to-night, because I want to walk as far as the park with you.”

Then, for a second, feeling returned to me; there came a little flutter of fear within me, the same I sometimes felt in childhood when I had told a lie and, wanting to confess it, stood at my mother’s door saying, “May I come in?”

There was no moon, but the sky was not dark.  We walked through the garden in silence; once or twice I contrived to force up to my lips, by great effort, the words I meant to speak; but then my heart beat so fearfully that I felt my courage fail me, and I said to myself, time after time, “Presently will do.”  It was not active love for Gabriel that checked me, merely the actual physical fear that I suppose most people experience when about to give forth words of great import.

But just as we reached the shrubbery, I said: 

“Gabriel, I have something to tell you.”

“And so have I,” said he, “something to tell you.  But you first.”

“No,” I replied; “you first.”

It was for one moment a great relief to think that he was about to save me from the trial I dreaded.

We took a few more steps in silence; I was looking down, not at him.  I felt my heart beat more than ever, fear was still there, but of a different kind; I awaited his words as one might await a death-blow.  But they did not come.  Suddenly he halted, and I, too.

“Well?” said I, and I lifted my head.

There he stood, smiling at me.

“Do you remember ’Peer Gynt’?” asked he.  “That was the bush.”

I looked at the laurel, and then at him again.

“Why, yes,” said I; “that was the bush.”

His dear eyes were gazing into mine; I could not look away again.  There came a tremor over all my body; my love for him swept over me in throbbing waves of pain; I fell towards him, stifling a cry against his breast.  And he, wrapping his arms about me, strained me to him with great force.

“Emilia!” he cried, “I love you very much; I have never told you how much I love you!”

I knew it to be the last cry of his conscience, but, as I lay there listening to the beat of his heart, there fled from me what little yet remained of my conquered spirit’s strength and noble purpose.  Only the woman in me cried aloud, “I cannot!”