She reflected a short time and then answered: "I have no memory for dates. But I know one thing, Johannes: there has not been a single day since then when I could have doubted you."
While speaking, she gazed thoughtfully into vacancy, as if this great truth were dawning upon her to-day for the first time. This gave me some little encouragement.
"Frau Luise," I continued, "that day seems to me like yesterday. And not one has passed since then that I have not felt you are the dearest creature in the world to me. But must we live on thus to the end, only together a few hours, though we feel that we belong to each other? You have long known my feelings. Can you not resolve to make the bond that unites us still firmer, to grant me the right to lay my whole insignificant self at your feet before the eyes of the world?"
The words had leaped from my lips as if some one else had lured them from my inmost soul, and I was startled at my boldness as I heard the sound of my own voice. I dared not look at her. I felt, or thought I felt, that she was forcing herself to keep calm and not rebuke my presumption. After a long pause, she replied, in a voice whose tones were sorrowful rather than indignant:
"Why have you said this, Johannes? You ought to know me and be aware that I have done with life. Do not suppose that the opinion of the world would awe me, if I felt that I was still young enough to be happy and make others happy. But I was probably never created to devote myself with my whole heart to a single individual, as a true wife ought. Even my unfortunate first love was but a delusion of my imagination. I have every talent for friendship or for being a Sister of Charity, and my most passionate feeling has ever been a fervent sympathy with _pauvre humanité_, as Mademoiselle Suzon said. But you would not wish to be married from compassion.
"No," she continued, as I was about to protest, "it would be a cruel pity. In a few years I should easily pass for your mother, and you would cut a ridiculous figure in attending me through the streets. You are still a young man and a very foolish one, as you have just proved. Your heart must still possess a fountain of youth, though you are no mere lad. Why don't you do me the favor to marry my Agnes, who is nine and twenty, an epitome of every feminine virtue, and, moreover, in love with you?"