The veranda seemed to be giving way under me. Do you know, at that moment a thought crossed my mind that overwhelmed me? Irinel was only Irinel, but, with my uncle, what courage I should need! How would he, an old man of pious habits, regard in his old age a marriage within the prohibited degree among members of his own family? Why did he stand in front of me? Why did he look at me like that? He understood me and was appraising me! His look spoke, though his lips most certainly did not move. I heard the words passing through his mind as distinctly as though some one had whispered in my ear: "I never could have believed, nephew, that you would have turned my child's head! What would your mother say were she alive to see this?" Why did not my uncle turn away from me? Was he looking at me or elsewhere? What else was there to see? I do not know if the fault was great, but the judge was cruel. And my judge grew bigger, like a Titan, like a wall between me and Irinel. In my ears there rang what I am convinced was the sentence he had secretly passed on me: "What a depraved youth! The old are passing away, and with them disappear the old moral ideas!" I was ready to sink under my chair. My uncle said to me: "Iorgu, you have not had any coffee. It seems to me you are not well, are you?" What irony! Were his words more gentle than before? Useless thought! I understood him. God defend you from a good man who disapproves of you. It's bad enough to feel oneself guilty before a good and upright man. Why was punishment for mankind invented? Punishment is the reward of sin. I could have wished that my uncle would pronounce his sentence of punishment. But no, he has taken me prisoner, he has judged me and, instead of punishing me, he stoops to give me coffee and two rolls. In all my life I had never experienced a greater agony. No doubt he had seen us walking silently together, not gaily as we used to do. He understood why Irinel stayed in the house on one or two Sundays. Of course he knew why I did not go to sleep till early dawn, and who knows, he might have heard me calling in my dreams: "Irinel, Irinel, I love you! Do you love me?" What would my uncle think of his daughter married to his sister's son? It would mean asking for a dispensation. Would it not be turning such a religious man into an object of derision in his old age? And for what reason? Just through the caprice of a boy whom he had brought up and cared for. Irinel and I had grown up together more like brother and sister than cousins! If there had only been a question of the civil right! But the laws of the Church! How could one trample them underfoot? Throughout the week, early in the morning, at night and through the day, at meals and during school hours, this thought occupied my mind! "It is impossible! It is impossible! I wonder that I did not see that sooner."