Suddenly, while she was thus displaying her finery for the benefit of her paralytic father, she heard the loud bang of the cottage door. Someone had entered, someone with a heavy footstep which resounded through the thin partition between the two rooms.
She thought it must be one of the young men, perhaps, with the poles for the carrying-chair; and she wondered vaguely why he had come so early.
She explained to the invalid that an unexpected visitor had come, and that she must go and see what he wanted; and then, half ashamed that someone should see her contrary to her mother's express orders and to all the proprieties, she went to the door and opened it.
The visitor had not closed the outer door when he had entered, and thus a gleam of brilliant September daylight shot straight into the narrow room; it revealed the tall figure of a man dressed in town clothes, who stood there for all the world as if he had a perfect right to do so, and who looked straight on Elsa as she appeared before him in the narrow frame of the inner door.
His face was in full light. She recognized him in the instant.
But she could not utter his name, she could not speak; her heart began to beat so fast that she felt that she must choke.
The next moment his arms were round her, he kicked the outer door to with his foot, and then he dragged her further into the room; he called her name, and all the while he was laughing—laughing with the glee of a man who feels himself to be supremely happy.