He was weary of himself, of cold ideas and brain-dreams. Life a poem? Not when you went about forever poetizing about your own life instead of living it. How innocuous it all was, and empty, empty, empty! This chasing after yourself, craftily observing your own tracks—in a circle, of course. This sham diving into the stream of life while all the time you sat angling after yourself, fishing yourself up in one curious disguise or another! If he could only be overwhelmed by something—life, love, passion—so that he could no longer shape it into poems, but had to let it shape him!
Involuntarily he made a gesture as if to ward it off with his hand. After all, he was afraid in his inmost heart of this mighty thing called passion. This storm-wind sweeping away everything settled and authorized and acquired in humanity as if it were dead leaves. He did not like it! This roaring flame squandering itself in its own smoke—no, he wanted to burn slowly.
And yet this living on at half speed in quiet waters, always in sight of land, seemed so paltry. Would that the storm and waves would come! If he only knew how, his sails should fly to the yards for a merry run over the Spanish Main of life! Farewell to the slowly dripping days, farewell to the pleasant little hours! Peace be with you, you dull moods that have to be furbished with poetry before you can shine, you lukewarm emotions that have to be clothed in warm dreams and yet freeze to death! May you go to your own place! I am headed for a coast where sentiments twine themselves like luxuriant vines around every fibre of the heart—a rank forest; for every vine that withers, twenty are in blossom; for each one that blossoms, a hundred are in bud.
Oh, that I were there!
He grew tired of his longing and sick of himself. He needed people. But of course Erik was not in now. Frithjof had been with him all morning, and it was too late for the theatre. Nevertheless he went out and strolled dejectedly through the streets.
Perhaps Mrs. Boye would be in. This was not one of her evenings and it was rather late. Suppose he try, anyway.
Mrs. Boye was in. She was home alone. Too tired from the spring air to go to a dinner party with her niece, she had preferred to lie on the sofa, drinking strong tea and reading Heine; but now she was tired of verses and wanted to play lotto.
So they played lotto. Fifteen, twenty, thirty-seven, a long series of figures, the rattling of dice in a bag, and an irritating sound of balls rolling on the floor in the apartment above them....
“This is not amusing,” said Mrs. Boye, when they had played for a long time without covering any numbers. “Is it?—No!” she answered herself and shook her head disconsolately. “But what else can we play?”
She folded her hands before her on the disks and looked at Niels with a hopeless, inquiring gaze.