"Leave me alone!" he cried out to her. "I am sick and tired of it all ... I must end it." "Only, don't run away," she whimpered, clinging to him once more. "Don't run away--anything rather than that." "I agree with you," he replied; "there is one other course for me to take--better than flight" He shuddered, and was silent. "You mean die?" she asked, half inquisitive, half terrified, pressing herself against him, like a child in the dark. He nodded. "You must see there is no third course." "Yes, I see. Then die," she whispered, throwing back her head with an inviting smile. "Much better die." He grew hot. "You seem to be in a tremendous hurry to get rid of me," he said with half fretful jocularity. "To get rid of you?" she asked, offended. "Do you think I would let you die without me?" "Felicitas!" he exclaimed, seizing both her hands. "Could there be a more blissful fate for me, beloved," she went on in a whisper, "than to die in your arms?" He held her close to him. A feeling of intoxication, which he interpreted as a longing for death, took shuddering possession of his soul. It was succeeded by a damping mistrust--mistrust of himself, and much more of her. "Are you serious?" he asked. "For I tell you plainly this time it will be no joke--we shall not drink toothache drops!" "How can you?" she pouted; and then, with a smile of rapture, she added, "I will be yours ... yours. If not in life, at least in death!" "Reflect on it well, Felicitas," he warned her again. "Remember, that it is not only the bald fact that we die. It may cost us no great pain to leave this scurvy world. But we shall forfeit in doing it all that man holds precious. We shall be cast like a dog into a nameless grave. They will spit at our memory." "What will that matter to us?" she asked, smiling. "We shall know nothing about it." "Then you wish to die?" "Yes, in your arms I wish to die," she breathed, and laid her head back with eyes blissfully closed, so that the evening light illuminated the fairness of her face. "That's how she will look," thought he. She lifted her lids. "Yes, yes; but I am still alive," she said, guessing his thoughts. Then with half playful melancholy, she sought his mouth thirstingly with her lips, and they proceeded to discuss how things should be arranged. The next day was to be consecrated to their last business affairs. At the hour of midnight they were to meet on the river's bank to select the place where the light of another day should dawn on them, united in death. Felicitas shivered. "You are already drawing back?" he asked, seized by fierce suspicion She hid her head on his breast. "And before?" she whispered up to him. His glance wandered into the distance. He seemed to see the blue-hanging lamp at Fichtkampen, in whose rays he had lost for ever his pureness of heart, shining at him alluringly again. "What do you mean by 'before'?" he stammered.