Nordan. Oh, well—I have my reasons.
Svava. What are they?
Nordan. We won't go into that now.
Svava. You told me the reason once.
Nordan. Did I?
Svava. I wanted, one day, to take hold of your hair, but you would not let me. You said: "Do you know why you must not do that?"—"No," I said.—"Because no one has done that for more than thirty years."—"Who was it that did it last?" I asked.—"It was a little girl, that you are very like," you answered.
Nordan. So I told you that, did I?
Svava. "And she was one of your grandmother's younger sisters," you said to me.
Nordan. She was. It was quite true. And you are like her, my child.
Svava. And then you told me that the year you went to college she was standing beside you one day and caught up some locks of your hair in her fingers. "You must never wear your hair shorter than this," she said. She went away, and you went away; and when, one day, you wrote and asked her whether you two did not belong to one another, her answer was "yes." And a month later she was dead.