So I pull myself together again, and start saying all manner of foolish things, to make her laugh. I drink a good deal and that helps; at last, she really seems to fancy I am making myself agreeable to her on her own account. She looks at me curiously.
“No, really, though, do you think I'm nice?”
“Oh, please—don't you understand?—I was speaking of Fru Falkenberg.”
“Sh!” says Frøken Elisabeth. “Of course it is Fru Falkenberg; I know that perfectly well, but you need not say so.... I really think we're beginning to make an impression on him over there. Let's go on like we are doing, and look interested.”
So she hadn't imagined I was trying on my own account, after all. I was too old for that sort of thing, anyway. Devil take it, yes, of course.
“But you can't get Fru Falkenberg,” she says, beginning again. “It's simply hopeless.”
“No, I can't get her. Nor you either.”
“Are you speaking to Fru Falkenberg now again?”
“No, it was to you this time.”
Pause.