He stroked his beard meditatively. "As we are here, child, and it seems that we both can't sleep, come and sit down. Sit down beside me; we may find lots to talk about." She felt dimly, "Now I must defend myself." But how could she resist? Already he had seized her by the shoulder and drawn her to the steps of the obelisk, where he had been sitting before. "What am I to do here?" she asked, cowering down. "Be sincere, out with it. You are not happy, my child?" She shrugged her shoulders twice. "Not even _now_!" she said. He suppressed a smile. "Come, confess.... What ails you? We have all remarked on the change in you. Grandmamma is beginning to worry about it. If you are fond of her, you will be sorry for that, eh?" She shook her head, struggling with her tears. "I want to be fond of everybody--everybody." "Yes, and don't you see we are all anxious that you should be happy? Don't you understand _that_, you obstinate one?" "Don't, you only try to hurt me." And she thrust her elbows at him. "I?" he asked. "Good Heavens! how?" "You will speak to me always as if I were a child." "And that hurts you?" She was silent. Now was the time to tell him all that was in her heart. The hour of reckoning had come. But she felt as if her lips, had been sealed. There was a whirling and rushing in her head. She felt a sensation as of a douche of water falling from her crown over her limbs, and with a soft sigh she sank against the stone. He was afraid that faintness had attacked her; and supporting her with his left arm he bent his head down to hers. The moon lit up one half of her face, while of the other only the contour of the oval cheek showed faintly against the darkness. "Be reasonable, sweet child," he begged. She did not move, and he could contemplate her at his leisure. Here and there in the dusky masses of her loose hair shone a high light like a glowworm, and a few dark strands waved in spiral form over the high smooth forehead. A line of care which he had not noticed before hovered at the corners of her softly curved mouth. Taken altogether, it was no longer the face of a child that lay there shining white in the moonlight; and, clearer than weeks before after the meeting at the inn, there awoke in his heart the self-reproach, "Here is the happiness which you will pass lightly by." The dreamy sunny premonition, "It will be," dared no more arise out of his soul's depths. What _had been_, held him in fetters. The past, of which he had delusively believed himself to be master long ago, ever stretched its spectre-like form in front of him with more threatening mien. It filled him at every pore with a dull repellant anguish. Not for nothing had he come at midnight to set out here and brood over emotions, which would not exist if one tried to define them with names, but which suddenly overwhelm a man when he thinks that he is safest from them. Not for nothing had he foregone sleep, he who at daybreak must be up and at his work.