William and his sister came up to them, and together they went into the house.
On a morning several days later Mogens and Thora were walking in the garden. He was to look at the grape-vine nursery, where he had not yet been. It was a rather long, but not very high hothouse. The sun sparkled and played over the glass-roof. They entered, the air was warm and moist, and had a peculiar heavy aromatic odor as of earth that has just been turned. The beautiful incised leaves and the heavy dewy grapes were resplendent and luminous under the sunlight. They spread out beneath the glass-cover in a great green field of blessedness. Thora stood there and happily looked upward; Mogens was restless and stared now and then unhappily at her, and then up into the foliage.
“Listen,” Thora said gayly, “I think, I am now beginning to understand what you said the other day on the hill about form and color.”
“And you understood nothing besides?” Mogens asked softly and seriously.
“No,” she whispered, looked quickly at him, dropped the glance, and grew red, “not then.”
“Not then,” Mogens repeated softly and kneeled down before her, “but now, Thora?” She bent down toward him, gave him one of her hands, and covered her eyes with the other and wept. Mogens pressed the hand against his breast, as he rose; she lifted her head, and he kissed her on the forehead. She looked up at him with radiant, moist eyes, smiled and whispered: “Heaven be praised!”
Mogens stayed another week. The arrangement was that the wedding was to take place in midsummer. Then he left, and winter came with dark days, long nights, and a snowstorm of letters.
All the windows of the manor-house were lighted, leaves and flowers were above every door, friends and acquaintances in a dense crowd stood on the large stone stairway, all looking out into the dusk.—Mogens had driven off with his bride.