let you. You ask what is
impossible. I were a fool if I were thus madly to cast the happiness
away which I would fain purchase with my heart's blood. Twice have
I risked my life to see you, to be able to kneel for one happy,
undisturbed hour at your feet, and gaze on you, and intoxicate myself
with that gaze. And now you ask that I shall voluntarily give up my
happiness and you!"

"My happiness! my happiness! yes, even my life I ask you to preserve
by letting me go hence, and return to my father's house," cried Elise,
eagerly.

As she perceived that he shook his head in refusal, and met his wild,
passionate looks, reading in them that she might expect no mercy
from him, her anger flashed forth. Imploringly she raised her arms to
heaven, and her voice sounded full and powerful: "Feodor, I swear to
you by God in heaven, and the memory of my mother, that I will only
become the wife of that man whom I follow of my free will out of the
house of my father. I am capable of leaving my father's house; but it
must be my own free choice, my free determination."

"No," said Feodor, wildly; "I will not let you go. You are mine, and
you shall remain."

Elise drew nearer to him with bashful tenderness. "You must let me go
now, in order one of these days to demand your pure wife from out
her father's house," said she. There was something so touching, so
confiding in her manner that Feodor, against his will, felt himself
overcome by it; but even while submitting to this fascination he was
almost ashamed of himself, and deep sadness filled his soul.

Silently they stood opposite to each other, Elise looking at him with
tenderness, yet with fear--he his head bowed, wrestling with his own
heart. Suddenly this silence was interrupted by a loud and violent
knocking at the door. The voices of his wild companions and mad
comrades were calling out loudly Feodor's name, and demanding, with
vehement impetuosity, the opening of the closed door. Feodor turned
pale. The thought that his Elise, this young, innocent, and
modest girl, should be exposed to the insolent gaze of his riotous
companions, irritated him.

Casting his angry glances around the room to seek for a hiding-place
in which to conceal Elise, he perceived that this was in vain, that
no escape was possible. Sadly he sank his head upon his breast, and
sighed. Elise understood him; she comprehended her disconsolate and
Desperate position.

"There is then no place where I can hi