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 felt a hand which lightly touched his face and then passed round his neck. He took the Princess in his arms; she was so supple and almost incorporate, that he touched her fearfully as if she were something fragile. She covered his face with her aerial kisses and whispered something which he could not catch; he felt his hair being delicately stroked. Then he felt her sinuous body yielding, the arm round his neck pressed him more closely and her moist lips moved on his own, as if they were speaking voicelessly. Trembling all over, she grasped Prokop more and more firmly, pulled down his head, pressed herself to him with her breasts and knees, twined both her arms round him; a passionate, agonizing embrace, the moaning of a creature which is being suffocated; they staggered in a convulsive, insane embrace. Never to leave go. To devour one another! To fuse into one being or to die! She was sobbing helplessly, but he freed himself from the terrible grip of her hands. She swayed as if she were intoxicated, pulled a handkerchief out of her bosom and wiped her lips, and without saying a word passed into the adjacent room.

With a splitting head Prokop remained in the darkness. This last embrace seemed to him to mean farewell.