your affection for me all a mistake?" he suggested.
"You are afraid, then?—you are afraid of falling into a well?—you are afraid lest some day I should hurt you by ceasing to be fond of you?"
"Would I could sink into the ground!" he reflected. The pain was increasing in proportion as he divined Olga's thoughts.
"On the other hand," she went on, "suppose you were to weary of love, even as you have wearied of books, of work, and of the world in general? Suppose that, fearing no rival, you were to go to sleep by my side (as you do on your sofa at home), and that my voice were to become powerless to wake you? Suppose that your present swelling of heart were to pass away, and your dressing-gown come to acquire more value in your eyes than myself? Often and often do such questions prevent my sleeping; yet I do not, on that account, trouble you with conjectures as to the future. Always I hope for better things, for, with me, happiness has cast out fear. Only for one thing have I long been sitting and waiting—namely, for happiness; until at length I had come to believe that I had found it. . . . Even if I have made
