“Are you also thinking of yourself?”
“No, of yourself—of you, Mogens.”
He drew her closer. They were going up to the conservatory. The door was open; it was very light in there, and the table with the snowy-white cloth, the silver dish with the dark red strawberries, the shining silver pot and the chandelier gave quite a festive impression.
“It is as in the fairy-tale, where Hansel and Gretel come to the cake-house out in the wood,” Thora said.
“Do you want to go in?”
“Oh, you quite forget, that in there dwells a witch, who wants to put us unhappy little children into an oven and eat us. No, it is much better that we resist the sugar-panes and the pancake-roof, take each other by the hand, and go back into the dark, dark wood.”
They walked away from the conservatory. She leaned closely toward Mogens and continued: “It may also be the palace of the Grand Turk and you are the Arab from the desert who wants to carry me off, and the guard is pursuing us; the curved sabers flash, and we run and run, but they have taken your horse, and then they take us along and put us into a big bag, and we are in it together and are drowned in the sea.—Let me see, or might it be...?”
“Why might it not be, what it is?”
“Well, it might be that, but it is not enough.... If you knew how I love you, but I am so unhappy—I don’t know what it is—there is such a great distance between us—no—”
She flung her arms round his neck and kissed him passionately and pressed her burning cheek against his: