"'Tis solemn earnest. Listen. Ask yourself, in the time we've been together here, have we ever exchanged a single kiss, a single touch, with any thought of passion?"
"Passion?" The girl's eyes looked frankly into his.
"Yes…. It might have been, you know. I am passionate by nature, but
when I look at you, it cools and dies. I am telling you the truth when
I say you have been like a healing, cooling draught to one in a fever.
And I believe you have changed me altogether, now and for ever after."
"I don't think I understand—not all of it. But have you really been so happy?"
"So unspeakably happy. Yes. And glad to feel myself strong and self-restrained. I have often thought that no one could ever dream what happiness and beauty can live in one little grey village. Do you know what I think? I believe that in every little grey village there is a quiet, secret happiness, that no one knows."
"Not everywhere, Olof. It is not everywhere there is anyone like you."
"But you! I don't mean to say, of course, it should be just like ours.
But a happiness…."
He drew the girl to him, and their lips met in a long, gentle kiss.
"Can everyone kiss like you?" she whispered shyly, with a tender gleam in her eyes.
"Maybe. I don't know."