I have not the audacity to ask you to follow me at once into an uncertain life, but give me a hope that in a year I may return and ask you to become my wife." "Do not return," said Sabine, motionless as a statue, and in a voice scarcely audible; "I implore you to say no more." Her hands convulsively grasped the back of the chair next to her, and, supporting herself by it, she stood with bloodless cheeks, looking at her suitor through her tears with eyes so full of grief and tenderness that the wild-hearted man before her was thoroughly overcome, and lost all self-confidence--nay, forgot his own cause in his distress at her emotion, and his anxiety to soothe it.
"I grieve that I should thus have shocked you," said he; "forgive me, Sabine." "Go! go!" implored Sabine, still standing as before.
"Let me not part from you without some comfort; give me an answer; the most painful were better than this silence." "Then hear me," said Sabine, with unnatural calmness, while her breast heaved and her hands trembled; "I loved you from the first day of your arrival; like a childish girl, I listened with rapture to the tone of your voice, and was fascinated by all your lips uttered; but I have conquered the feeling.

I have conquered it," she repeated.

"I dare not be yours, for I should be miserable." "But why--why ?" inquired Fink, in genuine despair.
"Do not ask me," said Sabine, scarce audibly.
"I must hear my sentence from your own lips," cried Fink.
"You have played with your own life and with the life of others; you would always be unsparing in carrying out your plans; you would undertake what was great and noble--that I believe--but you would not shrink from the sacrifice of individuals.

I can not bear such a spirit.
You would be kind to me--that, too, I believe; you would make as many allowances for me as you could, but you would always have to make them: that would become burdensome to you, and I should be alone--alone in a foreign land.

I am weak, spoiled, bound by a hundred ties to the customs of this house, to the little domestic duties of every day, and to my brother's life." Fink looked down darkly.