or the first time; but generally I feel as if you had belonged to me
for a whole eternity, and I had loved you all my life."

"To me too it seems as if you had always been mine, for I cannot imagine
how I could ever have existed without you. If only the parting were over
and we were together again!"

"Oh, believe me, that will pass more quickly than you fancy. Of course
it will seem long to wait--very long; but when it is over, and we are
together again, I think it will seem as if we had never been parted. So
it has been with me every day. How I have longed for the morning to come
and bring you with it! but when it came and you were sitting by my side,
I felt as if I had had you all the time and your hand had never left my
head."

"And yet a strange feeling of fear comes over me, when I think of our
parting hour."

"I do not fear it so very much. I know my heart will bleed when you say
farewell, but I am sure you will come back and will not have forgotten
me. Melitta wanted to enquire of the Oracle whether you would remain
faithful; and to question an old woman who has just come from Phrygia
and can conjure by night from drawn cords, with incense, styrax,
moon-shaped cakes, and wild-briar leaves; but I would have none of this,
for my heart knows better than the Pythia, the cords, or the smoke of
sacrifice, that you will be true to me, and love me always."

"And your heart speaks the truth."

"But I have sometimes been afraid; and have blown into a poppy-leaf, and
struck it, as the young girls here do. If it broke with a loud crack
I was very happy, and cried, 'Ah! he will not forget!' but if the leaf
tore without a sound I felt sad. I dare say I did this a hundred times,
but generally the leaf gave the wished-for sound, and I had much oftener
reason to be joyful than sad."

"May it be ever thus!"

"It must be! but dearest, do not speak so loudly; I see Knakias going
down to the Nile for water and he will hear us."

"Well, I will speak low. There, I will stroke back your silky hair and
whisper in your ear 'I love you.' Could you understand?"

"My grandmother says that it is easy to understand what we like to hear;
but if you had just whispered, 'I hate you,' your eyes would have told
me with a thousand glad voices that you loved me. Silent eyes are much
more eloquent than all the tongues in the world."

"If I could only speak the beautiful Greek language as you do, I
would.."

"Oh, I am so glad you cannot,