till holding my hands. 'How
humid and flashing your eyes! And those eyelashes, and that hair--dark,
dark! And that bosom, with its rise and fall! And that low, rich voice,
that is like dark wine! And that dress--dark, and full of mysterious
shadows, like our souls! Magda, we must have known each other in a
previous life. There can be no other explanation. And this moment is the
fulfilment of that other life, which was not aroused. You were to be
mine. You are mine, Magda!'

There is a fatalism in love. I felt it then. I had been called by destiny
to give happiness, perhaps for a lifetime, but perhaps only for a brief
instant, to this noble and glorious creature, on whom the gods had
showered all gifts. Could I shrink back from my fate? And had he not
already given me far more than I could ever return? The conventions of
society seemed then like sand, foolishly raised to imprison the
resistless tide of ocean. Nature, after all, is eternal and unchangeable,
and everywhere the same. The great and solemn fact for me was that we
were together, and he held me while our burning pulses throbbed in
contact. He held me; he clasped me, and, despite my innocence, I knew at
once that those hands were as expert to caress as to make music. I was
proud and glad that he was not clumsy, that he was a master. And at that
point I ceased to have volition....

IV

When I woke up, perplexed at first, but gradually remembering where I
was, and what had occurred to me, the realistic and uncompromising light
of dawn had commenced its pitiless inquiry, and it fell on the brass
knob, which I had noticed a few hours before, from the other room, and
on another brass knob a few feet away. My eyes smarted; I had
disconcerting sensations at the back of my head; my hair was brittle,
and as though charged with a dull electricity; I was conscious of actual
pain, and an incubus, crushing but intangible, lay heavily, like a
physical weight, on my heart. After the crest of the wave the trough--it
must be so; but how profound the instinct which complains! I listened. I
could hear his faint, regular breathing. I raised myself carefully on
one elbow and looked at him. He was as beautiful in sleep as in
consciousness; his lips were slightly parted, his cheek exquisitely
flushed, and nothing could disarrange that short, curly hair. He slept
with the calmness of the natural innocent man, to whom the assuaging of
desires brings only content.

I felt th