me and talked to me, have smiled and
answered; you have sat at my side pensive and silent; side by side with
me you have lived your own inner life, that inscrutable and inaccessible
existence of which I know nothing--can never know anything--- and your
soul has taken full and absolute possession of mine to its deepest
depths, but without ever a thought, without being aware of it, as the
ocean swallows up a river.--What is my love to you? What is any one's
love to you? The word has too often been profaned, and the sentiment too
often a make-believe.--I do not offer you love. But surely you will not
refuse the humble tribute of devotion that my spirit offers up to a
being nobler and higher than itself.'

She walked on at the same slow pace, her head bent, her face bloodless,
towards a seat at the further end of the wood and facing the sea.

It was a wide semicircle of white marble with a back running round the
entire length and, for sole ornamentation, a lion's paw at each end as a
support. It recalled those antique seats on which, in some island of the
Archipelago or in Greece or Pompeii, ladies reclined and listened to a
reading from the poets, under the shade of the oleanders, within sight
of the sea. Here the arbutus cast the shadow of its blossom and its
fruit, and in contrast to the marble, the coral of the stems seemed more
vivid than elsewhere.

'I care for everything that interests you; you possess all those things
after which I am seeking. Pity from you would be more precious to me
than passionate love from any other woman. Your hand upon my heart--I
know--would cause a second youth to spring up in me far purer than the
first and stronger. The ceaseless vacillation which makes up the sum of
my inner life would find rest and stability in you. My unsatisfied and
restless spirit, harried by a perpetual warfare between attraction and
repulsion, eternally and irremediably alone, would find in yours a haven
of refuge against the doubts which contaminate every ideal, and weaken
the will. There are men more unfortunate, but I doubt if in the whole
wide world there was ever one less happy than I.'

He was making use of Obermann's words as his own. In the sort of
sentimental intoxication to which he had worked himself up, all his
melancholy broodings surged to his lips, and the mere sound of his own
voice--with a little quiver of humble entreaty in it--served to augment
his emotions.

'I do not venture to tell you a