“I know it all, Elsie,” he began. “But it makes no difference at all. I have a hundred crowns left from my summer’s work; if you will go with me right now, we will get married and go to my uncle’s in Arendal, where I am promised work.”
Elsie dropped the latch; she was no longer afraid now; but she hung her head for shame and said:
“No, Svend; that you must not ask of me, for I cannot do it. I am much obliged, though, that you did want to.”
Svend sat down on a chair by the door, and when he saw that Elsie was crying, he cried too. In this way they wept together for a time, each in his corner.
But suddenly Elsie chanced to think that some one might come. She dried her eyes in a hurry and begged him to go—to go as quick as he could.
Kindly and humbly he let himself be driven away; but he said he would come again.
And he did come again often, at times when they could be undisturbed. Every time she looked at him her shame flamed up again, but constantly a little lighter, until she could sit long hours and talk with him. With a strange, nervous interest she heard how his money grew less and less. She inquired anxiously about his companions, and when she heard that he had fallen in with some of “the gang,” she knew that he was going wrong.
But she did not warn him; neither did she think it so bad. It would have been much, much worse if he had remained as handsome and innocent as when she saw him the first time, now that she herself had sunk so low.
The day he had twenty crowns of his money left, he offered them to her, half confident, half humbly, for a single kiss.
But, both frightened and angry, Elsie drew back; not for all the world would she touch him or his money.