"You bet! The artists spent any amount of money over the affair. The whole of Hades bristled with ingenious devices in every corner. I had got a couple of tickets, and had designed the dress of my best girl, as well as my own, and the morning before (there being little work done in the studios that day, as you may well imagine) I called upon her to see her try it on. To my chagrin I found she was down with influenza, or something of that sort appropriate to the bitter winter we were having. And it did freeze that year, by Jove!—so hard that Denmark and Sweden were united—to their mutual disgust, I fancy—by a broad causeway of ice. I remember, as I walked back from the girl's house towards the town along the Langelinie, my mortification was somewhat allayed by the picturesque appearance of the Sound, in whose white expanse boats of every species and colour were embedded, looking like trapped creatures unable to stir oar or sail. But as I left the Promenade and came into the narrow old streets of the town, with their cobblestones and their quaint, many-windowed houses, my ill-humour returned. I had had some trouble in getting the second ticket, and now it looked as if I should get left. I went over in my mind the girls I could ask, and what with not caring more for one than for another, and not knowing which were booked already, and what with the imminence of the ball, I felt the little brains I had getting addled in my head. At last, in sheer despair, I had what is called a happy thought. I resolved to ask the first girl of my acquaintance I met in my walk. Instantly my spirits rose like a thermometer in a Turkish bath. The clouds of irresolution rolled away, and the touch of adventure made my walk joyous again. I peered eagerly into every female face I met, but it was not till I approached the market-place that I knew my fate. Then, turning a corner, I came suddenly and violently face to face with Fröken Jensen."
He paused and relit his cigarette, and the maddening music of brass instruments and brazen creatures, which his story had shut out, crashed again upon my ears. "I reckon if you were telling this, you'd stop here," he said, "and put down 'to be continued in our next.'" There seemed a trace of huskiness in his flippant tones, as if he were trying to keep under some genuine emotion.
"Never you mind," I returned, smiling. "You're not a writer, anyhow, so just keep straight on."
"Well, Fröken Jensen was absolutely the ugliest girl I have seen in all my globe-trottings.... On second thoughts, that is the place to stop, isn't it?"
"Not at all; it's only in long novels one stops for refreshment. So go ahead, and—I say—do cut your interruptions à la Fielding and Thackeray. C'est vieux jeu."
"All right, don't get mad. Fröken Jensen had the most irregular and ungainly features that ever crippled a woman's career; her nose was—But no! I won't describe her, poor girl. She was about twenty-six years old, but one of those girls whose years no one counts, who are old maids at seventeen. Well, you can fancy what a fix I was in. It was no good pretending to myself that I hadn't seen her, for we nearly bowled each other over—she was coming along quick trot with a basket on her arm—and it seemed kind of shuffling to back out of my promise to her, though she didn't know anything about it. It was like betting with yourself and wanting to cheat yourself when you lost. I felt I should never trust myself again, if I turned welsher—that's the word, isn't it?"
"It's like Jephtha," I said. "He swore, you know, he would sacrifice the first creature that he saw on his triumphant return from the wars, and his daughter came out and had to be sacrificed."
"Thank you for the compliment," he said, with a grimace. "But I'm not up in the classics, so the comparison didn't strike me. But what did strike me, after the first moment of annoyance, was the humour of the situation. I turned and walked beside her—under cover of an elaborate apology for my dashing behaviour. She seemed quite concerned at my regret, and insisted that it was she that had dashed—it was her marketing-day, and she was late. You must know she kept a boarding-house for art and university students, and it was there that I had made her acquaintance, when I went to dine once or twice with a studio chum who was quartered there. I had never exchanged two sentences with her before, as you can well imagine. She was not inviting to the artistic eye; indeed, I rather wondered how my friend could tolerate her at the head of the table, till he jestingly told me it was reckoned off the bill. The place was indeed suited to the student's pocket. But this morning I was surprised at the sprightliness of her share in the dialogue of mutual apologies. Her mind seemed as alert as her step, her voice was pleasing and gentle, and there was a refreshing gaiety in her attitude towards the situation.
"'But I am quite sure it was my fault,' I wound up rather lamely at last, 'and, if you will allow me to make you amends, I shall be pleased to send you a ticket for the ball to-morrow night.'
"She stood still. 'For the Kunstner Karneval!' she cried eagerly, while her poor absurd face lit up.