ike a brook. I would have wished like a flower shedding perfume
out in the meadow to bow in gladness at your footfall. Is this
love?... Ah, how do my lips frame it, that word so inexpressibly
sweet as none other, save alas! your name... which I am never to
speak, by which I am never to call the highest that I know!" There
is no return indicated in this of any doubt of him. Elsa is in
this moment certainly all trust. It is but an expression of love
chafing a little at the reticence which seems a barrier one must
naturally wish away, if hearts are to flow freely together. Hardly
warningly, just lovingly, he interrupts her: "Elsa!"--"How sweetly"
she remarks enviously, "my name drops from your lips! Do you grudge
me the dear sound of yours? Nay, you shall grant me this boon, that
just in the quiet hours of love's seclusion my lips should speak
it...." He checks her, as before, unalarmed, without reproach, by an
exclamation of love. "My sweet wife!"--"Just when we are alone,"
she coaxes, "when no one can overhear! Never shall it be spoken in
hearing of the outside world." Instead of answering directly, he
draws her to him and turns to the open casement overlooking the
garden; he gazes thoughtfully out into the summer night and answers
by a sort of tender object-lesson. "Come, breathe with me the mild
fragrance of the flowers.... Oh, the sweet intoxication it affords!
Mysteriously it steals to us through the air, unquestioningly I
yield myself to its spell. A like spell it was which bound me to
you when I saw you, Sweet, for the first time. I did not need to
ask how you might be descended, my eye beheld you, my heart at
once understood. Even as this fragrance softly captures the senses,
coming to us wafted from the enigmatic night, even so did your purity
enthrall me, despite the dark suspicion weighing upon you!"

That she owes him much she is ready and over-ready to own. It is
almost embarassing to owe so much, to owe everything, and no means
of repaying, because the whole of oneself is after all so little.
"Oh, that I might prove myself worthy of you!" she sighs, "that
I need not sink into insignificance before you! That some merit
might lift me to your level, that I might suffer some torture for
your sake! If, even as you found me suffering under a heavy charge,
I might know you to be in distress! If bravely I might bear a burden
for you, might know of some sorrow threatening you! Can it be that
your secret is of such a