They had eaten supper—the trout and an improvised cream porridge—and were now standing, watching the sun set behind the great mountains.
The captain was going about on the turf, in slippers and unbuttoned uniform coat, smoking his pipe with extreme satisfaction. He stopped now and then and gazed at the sun playing on the mountain peaks far away.
Then a range of hitherto dark blue peaks took fire in violet blushing tints, until they seemed an entire glowing flame. And now the snow-fields became rose-red in the east—wonderful fairy tales in towers and castles gleamed there—the three snowy peaks then were turned to blood, with a burning, shining flash on top of the middle one. And again in the distance, still unlighted, blue peaks, snow-drifts, and glens, on which the shadows were playing.
Jörgen was lying, with his father's spy-glass, watching the reindeer on the ice-fields.
"Good-by, Miss Inger-Johanna," said Grip. "I am going over the mountains to-night, with one of the men to guide me. There are more people here than the hut will accommodate. But first let me say to you," he added in a subdued tone, "that this open-hearted day on the high mountain has been one of the few of my life.... I have not found it necessary to say a single cowardly, bad witticism—nor to despise myself," he added roughly. "Yes, just so—just as you stand there, so fine and erect and haughty, under the great straw hat, I shall remember you till we meet in the city again."
"It is a good ten miles to Svartdalsbod," suggested the captain, when he took leave—"always welcome to Gilje, Grip."
He was already giving his farewell greetings a good distance up the steep ascent of Torsknut.
"Does not seem to know fatigue, that fellow," said the captain.
She stood looking at him. The last rays of the sun cast a pale yellow tinge in the evening with this transparent mirroring. There was such a warm life in her face!
Some kind of an insect—a humble-bee or a wasp—buzzed through the open window into the room newly tinted in blue—hummed so noisily on the window-pane that the young girl with the luxuriant black hair and the slightly dark, clear-cut face, who was lying sleeping into the morning, was almost aroused.