The violence of the paroxysm would pass, and she would grow calmer,
drawing long, shuddering breaths as she struggled back to self-control.
Then a quick panting would begin and grow faster and faster, till another
burst of sobs shook her like a leaf in the storm.
In very awe of such great grief Paul stood awhile silently over her, the
tears filling his own eyes and running down his cheeks unheeded. She had
wept something like this, though nothing like so long or so bitterly, on
former occasions, when he had urged her with special vehemence to fix a
day when she would fulfil her promise to be his wife.
Now, as he pondered the piteous spectacle before him, the thought came
over him that his first reverential instinct concerning her, that despite
her resumption of a mortal form she was something more than mortal, was
true, and that he had done wrong in so far forgetting it as to urge her
to be his wife as if she were merely a woman like others. She herself did
not know it, but surely this exceeding cruel crying was nothing else but
the conflict between the love of the woman which went out to her earthly
lover, and would fain make him happy, and the nature of the inhabitant of
heaven, where there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage.
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