scent of them!--my face, my mouth, my lips met his. I grew blind as with
all my heart I kissed him. Then came a flash of icy terror, and a shudder
which it frights me even now to recall. Instantly I knew that but a
moment had passed, and that I had not moved an inch from the spot where
first my eyes met his.

But my eyes yet rested on his; I could not draw them away. I could not
free myself. Helplessness was growing agony. His voice broke the spell.
He lifted his hunting-cap, and begged me to tell him the way to the next
village. My self-possession returned, and the joy of its restoration
drove from me any lingering embarrassment. I went forward, and without a
faltering tone, I believe, gave him detailed directions. He told me
afterwards that, himself in a state of bewildered surprise, he thought me
the coolest young person he had ever had the fortune to meet. Why should
one be pleased to know that she looked quite different from what she
felt? There is something wrong there, surely! I acknowledge the something
wrong, but do not understand it. He lifted his cap again, and rode away.

I stood still at the foot of the lilac-tree, and, from a vapour,
condensed, not to a stone, but to a world, in which a new Flora was about
to be developed. If no new spiritual sense was awakened in me, at least I
was aware of a new consciousness. I had never been to myself what I was
now.

Terror again seized me: the face might once more look over the wall, and
find me where it had left me! I turned, and went slowly away from the
house, gravitating to the darkest part of the garden.

"What has come to me," I said, "that I seek the darkness? Is this another
secret? Am I in the grasp of a new enemy?"