“So you did, yes. But as to your being beautiful or not, surely I ought to know when I was sitting looking at you all the time?”
“Oh, you child!”
“And this evening you're lovelier still.”
“There's some one coming!”
Two figures rise up suddenly behind the lilacs. Fruen and the young engineer. Seeing it is only me, they breathe more easily again, and go on talking as if I did not exist. And mark how strange is human feeling; I had been wishing all along to be ignored and left in peace, yet now it hurt me to see these two making so little account of me. My hair and beard are turning grey, I thought to myself; should they not respect me at least for that?
“Yes, you're lovelier still tonight,” says the man again. I come up alongside them, touching my cap carelessly, and pass on.
“I'll tell you this much: you'll gain nothing by it,” says Fruen. And then: “Here, you've dropped something,” she calls to me.
Dropped something? My handkerchief lay on the path; I had dropped it on purpose. I turned round now and picked it up, said thank you, and walked on.
“You're very quick to notice things of no account,” says the engineer. “A lout's red-spotted rag.... Come, let's go and sit in the summer-house.”
“It's shut up at night,” says Fruen. “I dare say there's somebody in there.”