imply bore
the pressure, uncomplaining, uncomplying, hardly thinking, half
conscious, almost swooning, hysterical, with blood rushing wildly
to her heart, lost in an agony of mingled fear and love. "Oh,
Linda!--oh, my own one!" But the kisses were still raining on her
lips, and cheek, and brow. Had she heard her aunt's footsteps on the
stairs, had she heard the creaking shoes of Peter Steinmarc himself,
she could hardly have moved to save herself from their wrath. The
pressure of her lover's arms was very sweet to her, but still,
through it all, there was a consciousness that, in her very knowledge
of that sweetness, the devil was claiming his own. Now, in very
truth, was she a castaway. "My love, my life!" said Ludovic, "there
are but a few moments for us. What can I do to comfort you?" She was
still in his arms, pressed closely to his bosom, not trusting at all
to the support of her own legs. She made one little struggle to free
herself, but it was in vain. She opened her lips to speak, but there
came no sound from them. Then there came again upon her that storm of
kisses, and she was bound round by his arm, as though she were never
again to be loosened. The waters that fell upon her were sweeter than
the rains of heaven; but she knew,--there was still enough of life
in her to remember,--that they were foul with the sulphur and the
brimstone of the pit of hell.

"Linda," he said, "I am leaving Nuremberg; will you go with me?" Go
with him! whither was she to go? How was she to go? And this going
that he spoke of? Was it not thus usually with castaways? If it were
true that she was in very fact already a castaway, why should she not
go with him? And yet she was half sure that any such going on her
part was a thing quite out of the question. As an actor will say of
himself when he declines some proffered character, she could not see
herself in that part. Though she could tell herself that she was a
castaway, a very child of the devil, because she could thus stand and
listen to her lover at her chamber door, yet could she not think of
the sin that would really make her so without an abhorrence which
made that sin frightful to her. She was not allured, hardly tempted,
by the young man's offer as he made it. And yet, what else was there
for her to do? And if it were true that she was a castaway, why
should she struggle to be better than others who were of the same
colour with herself? "Linda, say, will you be my wife?"