full well that it must be so; but he covered his face with his hands.
"Make me not mad with terror," he whispered, "in my hour of death. If thou hidest a hideous face behind that veil, raise it not. Take my life, but let me not see thy face!"
The white figure made answer. "I am as fair as when thou didst woo me on the promontory. Wilt thou not look upon me once more?"
"Ah," sighed Huldbrand, "if only it might be so! and I might die by a kiss from thy lips!"
"Right glad am I, my beloved!" saith she; she threw back her veil and her face smiled forth, divinely beautiful. And, trembling with love and with the nearness of death, the knight bent towards her, and she kissed him with a holy kiss. But she did not again draw back, she pressed him to her ever closer and closer, and wept as if she would weep away her soul. Tears rushed into Huldbrand's eyes, and his breast surged and heaved, till, at the last, breath failed him, and he fell back softly from Undine's arms upon the pillows of his couch–dead.
"My tears have been his death," she said to some servants who met her in the ante-chamber. This is all she spake, and passing them by as they stared on her with terror, she went slowly out towards the fountain.
