"Woman! have you no suspicion of the abyss towards which we are drifting?" he exclaimed, holding out his clenched fingers. "Please don't tease me," she begged, and turning away from him, she half hid her face in the furs. "Speak out! I will at least know whether you have any idea of the dangerous game you are playing with yourself and me." "Ah, Leo!" she murmured. "I don't want to think; I won't think. It is so sweet to be together. That is all I know, and all I care about." "At first we were to repent," he scolded further, "and to do nothing else. We were to go in sackcloth and ashes and scourge our bodies and souls. And God knows I have carried out my part of the programme. My remorse has so lacerated and bruised me that I feel as if there wasn't an honest fibre left in me. I seem to myself so corrupt and rotten that when any one offers me his hand, I almost cry out, 'Don't defile yourself by touching me.' If that was the object of it all, then it has been attained. But is what we are doing now remorse? Tell me that, woman--isn't it, rather, fresh infamy?" "I don't know," she repeated, sighing. "I only know that it is sweet." "And you are satisfied?" She nodded three times in blissful silence. Then she said, "You are here, and that is enough." "But you don't ask what I have had to endure before I came. Can you conceive what it is for a man to cling wildly to the last straw of self-respect that he has left. I have spent whole nights tramping the woods; I have run till the soles of my feet bled; I have tried to tire myself to death so as not to come here. But I have come." Like a hungry, helpless child, he put out his hands to her in beseeching appeal, and she drank in his words with burning eyes. "My poor, poor boy," she said, in a low tone, and reaching up to him she caressed his feet. And then he buried his face in his hands and wept bitterly. She stared at him in terror and alarm. In all the sixteen years that she had known him, she had never seen a tear in his eyes before. She jumped up, and taking his head between both her hands, whispered, "Leo, dear, dearest Leo." She tried to loosen his fingers, and as she could not succeed, pressed her lips to them. He did not stir. Her anxiety grew ever greater, and she sprang upon the steps to kneel beside him, so that she could put her arms about his neck. A dim inkling of her guiltiness towards him dawned on her as she saw this giant so crushed in body and soul. To make good the harm that she had done and to drown her own compassion, she could think of nothing better to do than to kiss him. And she kissed every bit of his face which she could reach. She kissed his hair, his hands, his throat. Then she drew his head down on her lap, and unlocked his hands with caressing fingers. He lay like a man asleep, with closed eyes and relaxed muscles. His breath came in short, heavy gasps, and she kissed him long and passionately on the lips.