Here at last was the reality which he had often falsely imagined himself to be on the point of attaining, and which had always eluded his grasp.

He held in his arms a woman upon whom he could squander himself, with whom he could feel himself inexhaustible; the woman upon whose breast the moment of ultimate self-abandonment and of renewed desire seemed to coalesce into a single instant of hitherto unimagined spiritual ecstasy.

Were not life and death, time and eternity, one upon these lips?
Was he not a god?
Were not youth and age merely a fable; visions of men's fancy?
Were not home and exile, splendor and misery, renown and oblivion, senseless distinctions, fit only for the use of the uneasy, the lonely, the frustrate; had not the words become unmeaning to one who was Casanova, and who had found Marcolina?
More contemptible, more absurd, as the minutes passed, seemed to him the prospect of keeping the resolution which he had made when still pusillanimous, of acting on the determination to flee out of this night of miracle dumbly, unrecognized, like a thief.

With the infallible conviction that he must be the bringer of delight even as he was the receiver of delight, he felt prepared for the venture of disclosing his name, even though he knew all the time that he would thus play for a great stake, the loss of which would involve the loss of his very existence.

He was still shrouded in impenetrable darkness, and until the first glimmer of dawn made its way through the thick curtain, he could postpone a confession upon whose favorable acceptance by Marcolina his fate, nay his life, depended.
Besides, was not this mute, passionately sweet association the very thing to bind Marcolina to him more firmly with each kiss that they enjoyed?
Would not the ineffable bliss of this night transmute into truth what had been conceived in falsehood?
His duped mistress, woman of women, had she not already an inkling that it was not Lorenzi, the stripling, but Casanova, the man, with whom she was mingling in these divine ardors?
He began to deem it possible that he might be spared the so greatly desired and 'yet so intensely dreaded moment of revelation.