"You are silent, Fräulein," he continued. "I know you think it very strange that I should endeavor to atone for a great and almost unpardonable act of audacity, by committing a still greater one. Perhaps you will not believe me, or will consider me a raving madman for betraying to you, after so short an acquaintance, a passion that has carried me beyond all bounds of propriety and decorum. But you would judge differently, if you knew in what dreariness and isolation of heart I have passed the five years since I came to Munich; that not an hour's happiness has been vouchsafed to me; that no womanly being capable of awakening a single deeper thought has come near me. It is true I have not thought it worth my while to seek for such companionship. I have deluded myself with the idea that I missed nothing, that my heart and feelings did not hunger and thirst--until you suddenly crossed my path--and then this sudden vision of beauty and grace, coming as it did after long loneliness, brought about an intoxication that has completely robbed me of my senses. "I doubt whether this explanation will be clear to you. I know nothing more of you than your enthusiastic friend, our good Angelica, has told us. Perhaps you may never have had any experience yourself that would lead you to believe that a passion which bursts so suddenly upon reasonable men could be found anywhere but in a fairy tale. Enough, I thought I owed it to myself to tell you of this fact, merely as a singular instance that need trouble you no farther. And now, permit me to take my leave. I--I should really have nothing more to tell you, and as for you--I find it no more than right that you should prefer to reply only by silence to such singular and extraordinary disclosures." "No," she cried suddenly, as he already had his hand upon the door-knob; "it is not so right as you think, for one to tell all that he has upon his heart, while the other only accepts it all, and gives no confidence in return. To be sure, I know very well--I must attribute much of what you have confided to me to the easily-excited fantasy of an artist. Nevertheless, I am not so vain as not to imagine that in the course of five years you have never encountered a face fairer and more blooming than this of mine, that I have now borne about with me for full thirty-one. And for that reason I am almost forced to believe that there really is a secret bond of fate that quickly draws two human beings together in an altogether inexplicable way. For see--" she continued, covered with a confusion that only made her more beautiful, as she opened the drawer of her writing-desk and drew forth her diary--"I, too, although I perhaps knew less of you than you of me--I, too, have often had you with me in my thoughts--and since you have destroyed again the image that you took from me without my knowledge, ought not I also to destroy those pages in which you are spoken of--"