blazing curls in the shining starlight; he saw her sitting on the
garden-seat, saw her all at once tossing back her hat, and gazing at
him so confidingly ... and the tremor and hunger of love ran through
all his veins. He remembered the rose which he had been carrying about
in his pocket for three days: he snatched it out, and pressed it with
such feverish violence to his lips, that he could not help frowning
with the pain. Now he considered nothing, reflected on nothing, did
not deliberate, and did not look forward; he had done with all his
past, he leaped forward into the future; from the dreary bank of his
lonely bachelor life he plunged headlong into that glad, seething,
mighty torrent--and little he cared, little he wished to know, where
it would carry him, or whether it would dash him against a rock! No
more the soft-flowing currents of the Uhland song, which had lulled
him not long ago ... These were mighty, irresistible torrents! They
rush flying onwards and he flies with them....

He took a sheet of paper, and without blotting out a word, almost with
one sweep of the pen, wrote as follows:--

'DEAR GEMMA,--You know what advice I undertook to give you, what your
mother desired, and what she asked of me; but what you don't know and
what I must tell you now is, that I love you, love you with all the
ardour of a heart that loves for the first time! This passion has
flamed up in me suddenly, but with such force that I can find no words
for it! When your mother came to me and asked me, it was still only
smouldering in me, or else I should certainly, as an honest man, have
refused to carry out her request.... The confession I make you now is
the confession of an honest man. You ought to know whom you have to do
with--between us there should exist no misunderstandings. You see that
I cannot give you any advice.... I love you, love you, love you--and I