till silent: "no one
comes to the Father save by the Son, no one can understand heavenly
love who closes the heart to earthly affection. You have not found your
God, my friend, because you would not yield to the power of your
god-_man_, your Saviour, who would have delivered you from yourself. Do
you know for what sin Lucifer was expelled from the presence of the
eternal one? He wished to remain in presumptuous innocence, disdained
to submit to the power of love. Now he is freezing amid his flames, as
you, Christiane, shiver with cold while your whole nature is on fire.
Oh! my friend, you are silent. Would that I had an angel's tongue to
win from your soul some echo, thaw your frozen heart. You say you have
a horror of me. Oh! it is not of me, the poor weak man, whom a single
glance of yours can curb; you dread your own fall, which must precede
your deliverance, the loss by which you are to gain, the death through
which you must live. 'So a heart trembles at the approach of love, as
if it were menaced by death.' But you have a strong soul, Christiane,
you will shake off this cowardice and risk all to gain all, death for
life, sin for mercy, hate for love--

"I knew it," he whispered, and his voice grew almost mournful, without
losing its passionate impetuosity, "when I first saw you and my heart
instantly whispered your destiny: I knew this hour would come,
resolutely as you might struggle, painful as were the thorns pride
thrust into my soul. I have seen you from the beginning as I behold you
now, and could not help secretly laughing at your foolish anguish,
because you did not believe yourself formed to awaken love. You, whose
looks and words and gestures have haunted me day and night, inflamed my
blood as no woman ever had power to do! You, who hate me, _believe_ you
hate me--for this horror is only the mother of longing--have poisoned
my dreams with cruel tortures and made my waking hours miserable. If
you knew all that from childish pride I have concealed from you--fool
that I am, only to writhe the more helplessly at your feet waiting for
mercy or sentence! And the omnipotent one knows that but one thought,
one voice in my heart gave me courage to endure all this: the thought
that the hour would come when you would suddenly melt, and swept away
by the same storm, say to me: 'You have suffered enough, take me. Let
us perish to live again in each other!'" He had bent nearer and nearer
to her, his lips almost touched