Page:Poet Lore, volume 26, 1915.djvu/343

 —Yes, it was a ridiculous fear surely. But that sudden suspicion excited my soul to such a degree that I believe I would have died if I could not have sought you out and learned from you that what has been terrifying me is not true.

Jeroným.—This infinite happiness of mine in this time of greatest misfortune!

Sylvia.—It is not a misfortune, when it abides elsewhere and when, perhaps, amid outer ruin we are able to preserve our inward bliss. And that bliss I feel within me. And in this moment my ardor has broken through its former bounds. I wanted to be cold, icy, I wanted to smother in myself what had raged from that first moment when I saw you. I wanted to master myself and to take my blissful secret with me into the grave of the marriage that threatens me. But this awful anxiety about you would not let me play out my former role.—I am here with you, fearing for you and I confide to you what heretofore only my eyes could possibly have betrayed to you.

Jeroným.—And they did betray, Countess, and their glowing glance had made me infinitely happy even before I could suspect that a noble Countess

Sylvia.— —could also be a human being. She is a human being, she is. And carried away by a storm of passion, she is not afraid to acknowledge what she feels for you in the depths of her bosom.

Jeroným.—O Countess—Sylvia—what a heavenly reward your burning words are for those long hours of inner storm and sorrow which I suffered—when I had not a breath of hope that I could really awaken in your soul even a spark of that which burned within me. From the first moment that I looked upon your face, into your eyes, I ceased to be myself. The blood whirled in my bosom and in my head and the whole world whirled with me! (Passionately presses her hand to his lips.) And when, after wards, I dared come near you and especially when at the last hunt after that affair at the “Glade,” it was permitted to me to stay longer by your side to assist you to mount and dismount, to feel meanwhile the slight trembling of your tender hand, and to hear those few words with which you addressed me, to hide in my bosom your handkerchief which you had dropped—then, it was all over with me. And with the most blissful feeling, hopelessness also stole into my heart. I could not deceive myself—I saw clearly that many worlds separated me from the Countess