From the crown of her head to her feet and along her spine an icy shudder ran; then suddenly intolerable heat suffused her nerves, beat in her veins and overpowered her extremities with electric shocks like those of the torpedo.

Too feeble to resist, she felt herself drawn by a mysterious power to the depths below, wherein she fancied that she saw some monster belching its venom, a monster whose magnetic eyes were charming her, whose open jaws appeared to craunch their prey before they seized it.
"I die, my Seraphitus, loving none but thee," she said, making a mechanical movement to fling herself into the abyss.
Seraphitus breathed softly on her forehead and eyes.

Suddenly, like a traveller relaxed after a bath, Minna forgot these keen emotions, already dissipated by that caressing breath which penetrated her body and filled it with balsamic essences as quickly as the breath itself had crossed the air.
"Who art thou ?" she said, with a feeling of gentle terror.

"Ah, but I know! thou art my life.

How canst thou look into that gulf and not die ?" she added presently.
Seraphitus left her clinging to the granite rock and placed himself at the edge of the narrow platform on which they stood, whence his eyes plunged to the depths of the fiord, defying its dazzling invitation.