presence again possessed my senses and imagination like a returning siren
melody which had been overpowered for an instant by the roar of
threatening waves. It was a moment as delicious to me as the waking up
to a consciousness of youth after a dream of middle age. I forgot
everything but my passion, and said with swimming eyes--

"Bertha, shall you love me when we are first married? I wouldn't mind if
you really loved me only for a little while."

Her look of astonishment, as she loosed my hand and started away from me,
recalled me to a sense of my strange, my criminal indiscretion.

"Forgive me," I said, hurriedly, as soon as I could speak again; "I did
not know what I was saying."

"Ah, Tasso's mad fit has come on, I see," she answered quietly, for she
had recovered herself sooner than I had. "Let him go home and keep his
head cool. I must go in, for the sun is setting."

I left her--full of indignation against myself. I had let slip words
which, if she reflected on them, might rouse in her a suspicion of my
abnormal mental condition--a suspicion which of all things I dreaded. And
besides that, I was ashamed of the apparent baseness I had committed in
uttering them to my brother's betrothed wife. I wandered home slowly,
entering our park through a private gate instead of by the lodges. As I
approached the house, I saw a man dashing off at full speed from the
stable-yard across the park. Had any accident happened at home? No;
perhaps it was only one of my father's peremptory business errands that
required this headlong haste.