“I hear.”

“Then understand and answer me,” she said.

“I do not understand.  I cannot answer.”

“You must.  You shall.  I will have it so.  You cannot resist my will, and I will it with all my might.  You have no will—­you are mine, your body, your soul, and your thoughts, and you must love me with them all from now until you die—­until you die,” she repeated fiercely.

Again he was silent.  She felt that she had no hold upon his heart or mind, seeing that he was not even disturbed by her repeated efforts.

“Are you a stone, that you do not know what love is?” she cried, grasping his hand in hers and looking with desperate eyes into his face.

“I do not know what love is,” he answered, slowly.

“Then I will tell you what love is,” she said, and she took his hand and pressed it upon her own brow.

The Wanderer started at the touch, as though he would have drawn back.  But she held him fast, and so far, at least, he was utterly subject to her.  His brow contracted darkly, and his face grew paler.

“Read it there,” she cried.  “Enter into my soul and read what love is, in his own great writing.  Read how he steals suddenly into the sacred place, and makes it his, and tears down the old gods and sets up his dear image in their stead—­read how he sighs, and speaks, and weeps, and loves—­and forgives not, but will be revenged at the last.  Are you indeed of stone, and have you a stone for a heart?  Love can melt even stones, being set in man as the great central fire in the earth to burn the hardest things to streams of liquid flame!  And see, again, how very soft and gentle he can be!  See how I love you—­see how sweet it is—­how very lovely a thing it is to love as woman can.  There—­have you felt it now?  Have you seen into the depths of my soul and into the hiding-places of my heart?  Let it be so in your own, then, and let it be so for ever.  You understand now.  You know what it all is—­how wild, how passionate, how gentle and how great!  Take to yourself this love of mine—­is it not all yours?  Take it, and plant it with strong roots and seeds of undying life in your own sleeping breast, and let it grow, and grow, till it is even greater than it was in me, till it takes us both into itself, together, fast bound in its immortal bonds, to be two in one, in life and beyond life, for ever and ever and ever to the end of ends!”

She ceased and she saw that his face was no longer expressionless and cold.  A strange light was upon his features, the passing radiance of a supreme happiness seen in the vision of a dream.  Again she laid her hands upon his shoulder clasped together, as she had done at first.  She knew that her words had touched him and she was confident of the result, confident as one who loves beyond reason.  Already in imagination she fancied him returning to consciousness, not knowing that he had slept, but waking with a gentle word just trembling upon his lips, the words she longed to hear.