es him not, yet
she feels his presence.

She rests on his heart; he presses her closely to his breast. Leaning
on each other, they grope cautiously along through the dark, desolate
chamber to the divan at the upper end, and there, both locked in a happy
embrace, they sink upon the cushion.

"At last I have you again! and my arms again clasp this divine form, and
again my lips press this crimson mouth! Oh, my beloved, what an eternity
has this separation been! Six days! Six long nights of agony! Have you
not felt how my soul cried out for you, and was filled with trepidation;
how I stretched my arms out into the night, and let them fall
again disconsolate and trembling with anguish, because they clasped
nothing--naught but the cold, vacant night breeze! Did you not hear,
my beloved, how I cried to you with sighs and tears, how in glowing
dithyrambics I poured forth to you my longing, my love, my rapture? But
you, cruel you, remained ever cold, ever smiling. Your eyes were ever
flashing in all the pride and grandeur of a Juno. The roses on your
cheeks were not one whit the paler. No, no, you have not longed for me;
your heart has not felt this painful, blissful anguish. You are first
and above all things the proud, cold queen, and next, next the loving
woman."

"How unjust and hard you are, my Henry!" whispered she softly. "I have
indeed suffered; and perhaps my pains have been more cruel and bitter
than yours, for I--I had to let them consume me within. You could pour
them forth, you could stretch out your arms after me, you could utter
lamentations and sighs. You were not, like me, condemned to laugh, and
to jest, and to listen with apparently attentive ear to all those often
heard and constantly repeated phrases of praise and adoration from those
about me. You were at least free to suffer. I was not. It is true I
smiled, but amidst the pains of death. It is true my cheeks did not
blanch, but rouge was the veil with which I covered their paleness; and
then, Henry, in the midst of my pains and longings, I had, too, a sweet
consolation--your letters, your poems, which fell like the dew of heaven
upon my sick soul, and restored it to health, for new torments and new
hopes. Oh, how I love them--those poems, in whose noble and enchanting
language your love and our sufferings are reechoed! How my whole soul
flew forth to meet them when I received them, and how pressed I my
lips thousands and thousands of times on the paper