She was humming to herself and holding with both hands a string of large pale yellow amber beads that hung from her neck. Whenever she wavered on the red stripe, she would stop humming, but still grasped the necklace. Perhaps she was making an omen for herself: if she could walk a certain number of times up and down without getting off the red stripe and without letting go with her hands, Niels would come.
He had been there in the morning, when Erik went away, and had stayed till late in the afternoon, but he had promised to come again as soon as the moon was up and it was light enough to see the holes in the ice on the fjord.
Fennimore had obtained her omen, whatever it was, and stepped over to the window.
It looked as if there would not be any moon to-night; the sky was very black, and the darkness must be more intense out there on the gray-blue fjord than on land where the snow lay. Perhaps it was best that he did not attempt it. She sat down at the piano with a sigh of resignation, then got up again to look at the clock. She came back and resolutely propped up a big book of music before her, but did not play, merely turning the leaves absent-mindedly, lost in her own thoughts.
Suppose, after all, that he was standing on the opposite shore this very moment, fastening on his skates. He could be here in an instant! She saw him plainly, a little bit out of breath after skating, and blinking with his eyes against the light on coming from the darkness outside. He would bring a breath of cold air, and his beard would be full of tiny little bright drops. Then he would say—what would he say?
She smiled and glanced down at herself.
And still the moon did not appear.
She went over to the window again and stood gazing out, till the darkness seemed to be filled before her eyes with tiny white sparks and rainbow-colored rings. But they were only a vague glimmer. She wished they would be transformed into fireworks out there, rockets shooting up in long, long curves and then turning to tiny snakes that bored their way into the sky and died in a flicker; or into a great, huge pale ball that hung tremulous in the sky and slowly sank down in a rain of myriad-colored stars. Look! Look! Soft and rounded like a curtsy, like a golden rain that curtsied.—Farewell! Farewell! There went the last one.—Oh dear, if he would only come! She did not want to play—and at that she turned to the piano, struck an octave harshly, and held the keys down till the tones had quite died away, then did the same again, and again, and yet again. She did not want to play, did not want to.—She would rather dance! For a moment she closed her eyes, and in imagination she felt herself whirling through a vast hall of red and white and gold. How delicious it would be to have danced and to be hot and tired and drink champagne! Suddenly she remembered how she and a school friend had concocted champagne from soda water and eau de cologne, and how sick it had made them when they drank it.
She straightened herself and walked across the room, instinctively smoothing her dress as after a dance.
“And now let us be sensible!” she said, took her embroidery and settled herself in a large armchair near the lamp.