Hesitantly Markus laid his trembling hands on Carol’s. Their amorous desires for each other had long been constrained by society’s conventions, and although these passions remained they could no longer be expressed as fervently as before. Under the ill-lit candlelight Carol saw in his eyes a myriad of emotions — nervousness, uncertainty, and beneath this hesitation and perhaps the boldest of all, hunger! She thought of those lonely insomnious nights, with her incessant longings to have him beside her. And now arrived that moment she had yearned for so long a time, yet in her mind Carol could trace none of those emotions that used to entangle her so tightly. A vague sense of bewilderment empowered her consciousness, and she wept soundlessly at her vain attempts to restore it. As if she was trapped amidst a world of unending night, Carol struggled to halt and wished only to deny these conflicting thoughts inside her mind! In sheer consternation she felt as though she was suffocated by some invisible force, of Death’s impending footsteps, invisible yet vaguely audible, approaching her second by second. |