"Aren't you ever bored?" he answered.
"The days aren't long enough."
He looked round at the empty landscape and shuddered.
"Here. In Kökensee," he said. "It's spring now. But what about the wet days, the howling days? What about unmanageable months like February? Why"—he turned to her—"you must be a perfect little seething vessel of independent happiness, bubbling over with just your own contentments."
"I never was called a seething vessel before," said Ingeborg, hugging her knees, her eyes dancing. "What an impression for a respectable woman to produce!"
"What a gift to possess, you mean. The greatest of all. To carry one's happiness about with one."
"But that's exactly what you do. Aren't you spilling joy at every step? Splashing it into all the galleries of the world? Leaving beauty behind you wherever you've been?"
He twisted himself round to lie at full length and look up at her. "What delightful things you say!" he said. "I wish I could think you mean them."
"Mean them?" she exclaimed, flushing again. "Do you suppose I'd waste the precious minutes saying things I don't mean? I haven't talked to any one really for years—not to any one who answered back. And now it's you! Why, it's too wonderful! As though I'd waste a second of it."
"You're the queerest, most surprising thing to find here on the edge of the world," he said, gazing up at her. "And there's the sun just got at your hair through the trees. Are you always full of molten enthusiasms for people?"