But Svend would not leave Elsie, who was standing with the empty bottle in her hand; he drew her with him toward the outlet through the alley which was yet free.
Suddenly she halted and pressed her hands tight against her bosom. Her eyes were brighter than ever; her lips were red with blood—she had cut herself on the neck of the bottle—and all her youthful beauty seemed for a moment to have returned to the little, delicate countenance; Svend stood utterly spell-bound; so beautiful she had never been.
Then she began to laugh, capriciously and merrily at first as when they were friends and all was well; then louder and louder until it was Loppen’s old laughter; that which could run up stairs and down stairs and right into people’s hearts; but constantly wilder and wilder she laughed until it went through him like a knife through the marrow of his bones.
Svend seized her to make her be quiet; but she then once more pressed her hands to her bosom, her face grew ashen, and with a long, quivering sigh she slid out of his arms and fell with her face in the snow.
Just then a policeman came running, and Svend took to his heels in the opposite direction.
“Merry Christmas,” said the wife of the police-chief.
“Thanks; the same to you!” answered Mrs. Bentzen.
They were standing under the big gas-light before Consul With’s entrance. There was a broadening of the streets, almost like a small market, between the consul’s house on the one side and Ellingsen & Larsen’s on the other. And as that was the central point of the town’s traffic, little by little several ladies gathered there, who had completed their purchases and their distributions. Mrs. With herself, who had just come home from the city, alit from her carriage and joined the group to exchange greetings and talk over the day.
There were not only ladies there from the Institution for Fallen Women of St. Peter’s Parish, but from the various associations of the town; and the conversation was lively indeed; partly a little triumphant, occasionally too a trifle envious, when it came to defending or advancing their own institutions, as to how much they had had to distribute. But at bottom the tone was benevolent; each was done and had a good conscience.