"And he is not a stranger to you, this man? I thought it must be so the first moment I met him--Johanna--" his voice trembled in feverish excitement--"and what relation does Alison stand to you? What right has he over you?" "I am his betrothed." The flush vanished from his face, quickly as it had come, and a deep pallor look its place. "His betrothed!" repeated he in a hollow voice. "And do you love him?" "No!" "And still have you given him your promise--your future?" There lay a bitter lament in this reproach. Jane's glance fell. "I have done so," she replied in a low voice. "Then would to God we had never met!" said Walter despairingly. Jane was silent for a moment "And why?" she asked at length almost inaudibly. He stepped close to her, and his voice also fell to a low, but impassioned whisper. "And do you ask? Need I tell you in words what you long since must have divined, or--is it I alone who will be wretched through your confession?" Slowly Jane again turned her face to him; her voice sounded unnaturally calm, but her eyes were fixed upon his face with an unremitting, anxious inquiry, as if every fibre of his inner being must answer her. "We need not make ourselves wretched on this account, we _must_ not. Destiny has brought us together cruelly, perhaps, but if it denies us the highest happiness, it has not ordained our separation. Perhaps--" her glance sank deeper and deeper into his--"perhaps I can persuade my future husband to a long residence upon the Rhine. I know that a single word from my lips will make him approach you as a friend. You need not thrust back this hand! Walter. You will learn to control your emotions, you will learn to regard me as a friend as a--brother should--" "Johanna!" interrupted he with a wild, passionate outcry. She was silent, but her eyes did not leave his face; it had now the same expression as upon that first meeting in N., as if the next moment would bring with it a decision for life or death. "And you say this to _me_!" he broke out in uncontrollable anguish. "Must I hear it from your lips? Would you deride the enthusiast, the dreamer, in me, or do you yourself dream of a tie of ideal friendship, where love becomes sacrilege? Do not deceive yourself! Between spirits such a tie may be possible, but not between hearts; there it could spring only from coldness or from crime. Once in the solitude of my study, shut out from all the world, I too indulged in just such sickly fancies; then came this love to you, impelling me out into active life, into earnest, glowing reality. And this life and this reality now demand their right; I must either possess you or lose you eternally! No third person can come between us."