suddenly stricken with a surprise that seemed to be mingled with painful thought.
"Stop," he said, "don't speak, Elisabeth. Let me say all that I meant to say. Stay with me, Elisabeth: be my wife, for I love you. See, I know nothing about love, I don't even know how to tell you these things—they're strange to me. What I've just said to you I never said before to any woman. But—you I want; you, and nobody and nothing else. Oh, you don't know, perhaps, what it is to feel like that! See, Elisabeth, of late I've thought of nothing but you: you seem to fill my mind so that nothing else can come there. And somehow—perhaps it's because I have never known anything of love before, I seem to feel that, if you are beyond me, I shall never be satisfied—never! Oh, my dear, just think what it is to feel like that—and I a man that's gone all these years and never so much as turned his head to look at a woman, Elisabeth—I never thought to feel these things—they're a mystery to me.
