fainting on our lips.

The pain that is pleasure, and the pleasure that is pain, thrilled and
pierced every nerve as I held her and felt those lips under mine, her
heart beat under my heart, her weak arms twisted round my throat. When
at last my lips set hers free, on fire with the passion of my own, they
moved in a half-delirious murmur,--

"Victor, you don't know how I love you!"

I have no distinct recollection of passing up the remaining stairs, but
we did reach the landing, and a second or two later were standing in
the drawing-room. I think she said it was pretty, and so on, but I
hardly heard, my head was reeling, and all my senses dull, her figure
leant a little against me, and the pressure of her arm was upon mine.
After the drawing-room, the reading-room, and a breakfast-room, all
opening from the same corridor, had been passed through, there were
still two rooms unexplored on that floor. I turned the handle of the
nearer door, and then pushed it open.

Lucia stepped on to the threshold, and then I felt her arm start
violently in mine, and she drew back with a sharp, instinctive movement.

I looked down upon her and murmured,--

"Our room, dearest."

The colour blazed all over the fair skin, till it seemed scorching it,
and tears startled into the dismayed eyes, which she turned from me
confusedly, as she shrank back into the passage.

I was startled, and a chill seemed to fall upon me, and penetrate
deeper as a grey pallor succeeded to the burning flush, and she had to
lay one trembling hand on my arm again for actual support.

"Victor, it is nothing!" she said, hurriedly, forcing a smile to her
lips.

"It--it--startled me."

She made a nervous step forward, as if she would have forced herself to
enter the room with me, but I collected myself with a great effort, and
gently drew the door shut.

"There is another sitting-room a little farther on; come and look at
it," I said, quietly, in a light, indifferent tone, as if we were
meeting in society for the first time.

I drew her on past the door, feeling her hand fluttering on my arm, and
her feet uncertain beside my own. Inwardly I was alarmed--dismayed. Her
extreme nervousness, and the physical effect upon her, frightened me.
With crushing force and clearness came back to me the remembrance of
the fearless, eager, unrestrained abandonment of body and mind, the gay
exuberance of careless passion, with all the vigour of youth and health
in it,