He stretched himself out on the grass, his head resting on the mole-hill, his forehead covered by the hem of her dress.
She leaned back on the bush in order to find support in its branches.
“The needles don’t prick at all,” she said; “they mean well by us. I believe we could pass through the Sleeping Beauty’s hedge of thorns.”
“You—not I,” he answered, lifting his eyes to her from his recumbent position; “every thorn has pricked me. I am no fairy prince, not even a simple Hans in luck, am I?”
“That will all come in time,” she replied, consolingly, “you must not always have sad thoughts.”
He wanted to reply, but he lacked the right words; and as he looked up, meditatively, a swallow flitted through the blue sky. Then involuntarily he uttered a whistle as if he wanted to call it, and as it did not come, he whistled again, and for a second and third time.
Elsbeth laughed, but he went on whistling—first without knowing how, and without reflecting why; but when one tone after the other flowed from his lips, he felt as if he had become very eloquent all of a sudden, and as if in this manner he could say all that weighed on his heart and for which in words he never could have found courage. All that which made him sad, all that which he cared about came pouring forth. He shut his eyes and listened, so to speak, to what the tones were saying for him. He thought that the good God in heaven spoke for him, and was relating all that concerned him, even that which he had never been clear about himself.
When he looked up he did not know how long he had been lying there whistling, but he saw that Elsbeth was crying.
“Why do you cry?” he asked.
She did not answer him, but dried her eyes with her handkerchief and rose.