As if in mockery he gave to the imprisoned youth the passionately desired Gro to be with him in the dungeon. "She stood there as if she had glided into his prison by the flood of light entering in and he trembled lest the light would again absorb her into itself." He knew not what power forced him to his knees and threw him at her feet with a prayer for forgiveness. She had however merely a scornful laugh for the man humbling himself in his love and the cruelly abusive word, "Creeping worm!" Then in his sense of affront there comes the thought that Gro was given into his power. While he tried the walls of his dungeon to ascertain if he was perhaps watched, Gro stood and stared out by the aperture through which the light entered, now paler than before. Soelver stepped near her, drew the single gold ring from his finger, which had come down to him through many generations of his forefathers, and extended it to her as a bridal gift. But she threw it unhesitatingly out through the peephole. Now bitterness raged in Soelver's blood. "He bowed himself before her face in order to intercept her gaze, but he did not meet it though her eyes were directed toward his. It was indeed no glance but a depth into which the whole light of day, which was blue now without overhead, was drawn down into a deep well. Soelver became intoxicated with this light, which, as it were, appeared to seek her alone and threw an aureole of intangible beauty about her form." He crept up and pushed forward the wooden shutter, then carried Gro to his cot. "She had let herself go without resistance and fell lifelessly with her arms hanging down. Soelver laid his face close to hers. His breath was eager, his blood was on fire and in his fierce wrath he intended to yield himself to the boiling heat of sensual passion. Her cheeks however, her skin, her lips were cold as those of death. He began nevertheless wildly to kiss her face, once and again, as if to waken warmth and life in the cold skin. Yet with every kiss it was as if she grew more fixed, as if the lips shriveled and grew cold and damp as ice over the teeth. The cold from this embrace crept over Soelver, and drew the heat and fervor from his nerves, until he shook suddenly with the cold and shuddered with the thought that he had a corpse under him. Yet in that selfsame moment he marked the rising of her breast as she drew in her breath, full of strength with all its coldness, so full of strength that it pushed Soelver away and he slipped down to the hard flags of the floor.