Once, while accompanying her home, he told her that he loved her, and that he wanted her to be his wife. He was startled at the effect his words had on her: she reeled as though she had been struck, stared with wide-open eyes and turned pale; she leaned against the wall, and said, clasping her hands and looking, almost terrified, into his face:
"I was beginning to fear that that might be so; almost I felt it, because I loved you long ago. But, O God! what is going to happen now?"
"Days of your happiness and mine will begin, days of mutual work," he exclaimed.
"No," said the girl, her head drooping. "No; we should not have talked about love."
"Will you be married according to the laws of the Church?" she asked quietly.
He overtook her, tried to persuade her; she heard him out in silence and then said:
"I, my mother and my father are all believers, and will die believers. Marriage at the registrar's is no marriage for me; if children are born of such a marriage I know they will be unhappy. Love is consecrated only by marriage in a church, which alone can give happiness and peace."
It seemed to him that soon she would yield; he, of course, could not give in. They parted. As she bade him good-bye the girl said:
"Let us not torment each other, don't seek meetings with me. Oh, if only you would go away from here! I cannot, I am so poor."
The struggle between two strong natures began: they met, of course, and even more often than before; they met because they loved each other, sought meetings in the hope that one or other of them would be unable to stand the torments of an ungratified longing which was becoming more and more intense. Their meetings were full of anguish and despair; after each one he felt quite worn out and exhausted; she, all in tears, went to confess to a priest. He knew this and it seemed to him that the black wall of people in tonsures became stronger, higher and more insurmountable every day, that it grew and parted them till death.
Once, on a holiday, while walking with her through a field outside the town, he said, not threateningly, but more as if to himself:
"Do you know, it seems to me sometimes that I could kill you."
Looking at him affectionately she answered: