e for a while
but its longing,--no sleep but the stupid fatigue when one cannot
think more? What has my existence been since that day on the Quai by
the Vierwaldstattersee?--_Je ne peux rien faire!_--To the world I am
dead.--There is perhaps no future for me because I have learned to
love and have not learned to be loved."

His voice broke utterly; he loosed her arm, walked apart once more, and
was once more silent.

Then her agitation suddenly found voice and to her own intense horror
she heard herself laughing--laughing a loud hysterical laughter, that
resounded hideously and was beyond her own control.

"You are amused," he exclaimed, and his mood took on a justifiable tone
of outraged anger; "you laugh. You have made me like this and now you
laugh. If you were suffering and I had made you so, I should be ashamed
and sorry; but a woman laughs. You are as that other," he continued,
impetuously, "and it will be the same some time after. When she had made
me wild, then she laughed. When I heard her laugh, I grew quite cold, I
cared no more, never more. Then, when I cared no more, she learned to
care, she grew to love, she wrote me many letters, she became most
miserable; but for me nothing mattered. Because I could not care more."

Her laughter continued spasmodically in spite of her struggles to check
it. But between the paroxysms she gasped:

"I never tried--to make you love me. I never wanted you to come where I
did--"

"But now that I am all yours," he interrupted, "now that nothing is
left for me, but you--" He paused. "What will I do now?" he added,
asking the question with a simplicity at once boyish and heartrending.

She was silent; her laughter had ceased. He came close to her and took
her hand again within his own. And then in the darkness beside him he
suddenly heard the bursting misery of her sobs.

"You weep," he cried.

"No," she whispered faintly, "no."

"You weep," he repeated slowly, and gathered her warmly and closely
within his arms.

"What is it necessary that we suffer?" he asked her softly. "Let us
cease struggling, let us be only happy," and then he bent his head so
that his cheek touched hers, and waited for the words of her answer.
"Your heart is very near mine," he whispered to her silence, "let it
stay near mine, let it rest mine." Still she was silent. "_N'est-ce
pas?_" he asked, pressing her closer yet.

To her, at that instant, the darkness was flashing with strange lights,