Again he felt repulsion, and again remorse, mixed with that indescribable pain which a man feels when he sees his beloved ugly, badly dressed, pitiful, or ridiculous. People in the street looked after her, especially when the wind blew out her thin serge mantle, which resembled a morning coat; it swelled out like a balloon and spoilt her fine figure. He hurried forward to take the packets from her; but she only waved him off, and hastened on, cheerful and undismayed.
When she came out of the post office, she wanted to go and buy larger boots. He followed. Since the purchase of them would occupy half an hour, she told him to wait outside. When at last she came out, she walked quite comfortably for a time, but then discovered that the new boots also were too tight.
"What do you think of a shoemaker like that?" she said.
"But he did not make the boots too tight for you! There were larger ones also."
That was a dangerous commencement of the conversation, and as they sat down at a table in a café, the silence was uncomfortable. They sat opposite each other and had to look one another in the eyes; they sought to avoid doing so, but could not, and when they were obliged to look at each other, they turned away.
"You would like now to be in Copenhagen with your friends," she said. It was a good guess. But even if he could have transported himself thither for a second, he would have wished himself back again at once.
Her nervousness increased, and her eyes began to sparkle, but since she was intelligent, she understood that neither of them was to blame.
"Go for a walk," she said; "we must be away from each other for a while, and then you will see it will be better."
He quite agreed with her, and they parted without any bitterness.
As he walked along by the side of the harbour, he felt his nerves become settled and quiet. He became once more conscious of himself as a separate and independent being; he no longer gave out emanations but concentrated himself; he was once more an individual in his own skin. How well he knew these symptoms, which signified nothing, but which in spite of all attempts to explain them, persisted as a constant phenomenon.