Suddenly he cranes his neck forward, and a flood of warmth surges from his heart to his cheeks, swelling the veins of his neck; there, on the gravel path just below, in his master’s garden, walks Clara.
White stockings and little low shoes; her footsteps shoot forward like the narrow-leaved bine of some swiftly growing plant, and she hums in time to her walk. Kasper is so fascinated that involuntarily he hums as well, but wakes with a start of fright at hearing his own rough voice. He fancies he can see the delicate skin of her neck gleaming through the lace edge of her dress, the blue pulse in her temples, and the play of the sunlight in her dark-brown hair.
She walks round the lawn, and turns into a patch that would take her along under the wall, where Kasper cannot follow. He realises this, and works his way right out on to the roof, with only his legs dangling down inside.
“Clara, dear little Jomfru Clara,” whispers his mouth, “do not go away!”
At the same moment his legs are gripped by powerful claws, and he is hauled down with such force and suddenness that he has not time even to put out his hands. Down he comes anyhow on the floor, and lies there, bruised and shaken, looking up into Jespersen’s green eyes.
“Ho! So you loaf about looking out of the window when you ought to be counting nails!”
And now it was discovered that he had used the scales. Jespersen found one packet with ninety-eight nails and another with a hundred and one instead of a hundred, and ran off to tell his master. Next day Kasper was sent for from the inner office.
The thought of this is a culmination of delight for Egholm in his sleepless state, but at the same time, he notes, in parenthesis, as it were, that he is now on the brink of the abyss he knows will shortly swallow him up.
The stately man with the dark, full beard talks to him of doing one’s duty to the utmost, not merely as far as may be seen. And during the speech Kasper discovers on the leather-covered wall a picture in a gilded oval frame—a painting of Clara.