the kindness with which she treats me. I seem like a little captive
mouse with which a beautiful cat prettily plays. She is ready at any
moment to tear it to pieces, and my heart of a mouse threatens to
burst.

What are her intentions? What does she purpose to do with me?

* * * * *

It seems she has completely forgotten the contract, my slavehood. Or
was it actually only stubbornness? And she gave up her whole plan as
soon as I no longer opposed her and submitted to her imperial whim?

How kind she is to me, how tender, how loving! We are spending
marvellously happy days.

To-day she had me read to her the scene between Faust and
Mephistopheles, in which the latter appears as a wandering scholar.
Her glance hung on me with strange pleasure.

"I don't understand," she said when I had finished, "how a man who
can read such great and beautiful thoughts with such expression, and
interpret them so clearly, concisely, and intelligently, can at the
same time be such a visionary and supersensual ninny as you are."

"Were you pleased," said I, and kissed her forehead.

She gently stroked my brow. "I love you, Severin," she whispered. "I
don't believe I could ever love any one more than you. Let us be
sensible, what do you say?"