“You saw him?” “Yes. At our house. He came to see us.” “Gemma? Then you love me?” She turned to him. “Should … I have come here, if not?” she whispered, and both her hands fell on the seat. Sanin snatched those powerless, upturned palms, and pressed them to his eyes, to his lips…. Now the veil was lifted of which he had dreamed the night before! Here was happiness, here was its radiant form! He raised his head, and looked at Gemma, boldly and directly. She, too, looked at him, a little downwards. Her half-shut eyes faintly glistened, dim with light, blissful tears. Her face was not smiling … no! it laughed, with a blissful, noiseless laugh. He tried to draw her to him, but she drew back, and never ceasing to laugh the same noiseless laugh, shook her head. “Wait a little,” her happy eyes seemed to say. “O Gemma!” cried Sanin: “I never dreamed that you would love me!” “I did not expect this myself,” Gemma said softly. “How could I ever have dreamed,” Sanin went on, “when I came to Frankfort, where I only expected to remain a few hours, that I should find here the happiness of all my life!” “All your life? Really?” queried Gemma. “All my life, for ever and ever!” cried Sanin with fresh ardour. The gardener’s spade suddenly scraped two paces from where they were sitting. “Let’s go home,” whispered Gemma: “we’ll go together—will you?” If she had said to him at that instant “Throw yourself in the sea, will you?” he would have been flying headlong into the ocean before she had uttered the last word. They went together out of the garden and turned homewards, not by the streets of the town, but through the outskirts. XXVIII Sanin walked along, at one time by Gemma’s side, at another time a little behind her. He never took his eyes off her and never ceased smiling. She seemed to hasten … seemed to linger. As a matter of fact, they both—he all pale, and she all flushed with emotion—were moving along as in a dream. What they had done together a few instants before—that surrender of each soul to another soul—was so intense, so new, and so moving; so suddenly everything in their lives had been changed and displaced that they could not recover themselves, and were only aware of a whirlwind carrying them along, like the whirlwind on that night, which had almost flung them into each other’s arms. Sanin walked along, and felt that he even looked at Gemma with other eyes; he instantly noted some peculiarities in her walk, in her movements,—and heavens! how infinitely sweet and precious they were to him! And she felt that that was how he was looking at her. Sanin and she were in love for the first time; all the miracles of first love were working in them. First love is like a revolution; the uniformly regular routine of ordered life is broken down and shattered in one instant; youth mounts the barricade, waves high its bright flag, and whatever awaits it in the future—death or a new life—all alike it goes to meet with ecstatic welcome.