But to Pelle she speaks as they glide along. “Pelle, how strong you are! Why have you never taken me? Do you love me?” Her hand is clasping his shoulder as she whirls along beside him. Her breath burns in his ear.
“I don’t know!” he says uneasily. “But stop now—you are ill.”
“Hold me like that! Why have you never been stronger than I? Do you want me, Pelle? I’ll be yours!”
Pelle shakes his head. “No, I love you only like a sister now.”
“And now I love you! Look—you are so distant to me—I don’t understand you—and your hand is as hard as if you came from another world! You are heavy, Pelle! Have you brought me happiness from a foreign land with you?”
“Hanne, you are ill! Stop now and let me take you home!”
“Pelle, you were not the right one. What is there strange about you? Nothing! So let me alone—I am going to dance with the others as well!”
Hitherto Hanne has been dancing without intermission. The men stand waiting for her; when one releases her ten spring forward, and this evening Hanne wants to dance with them all. Every one of them should be permitted to warm himself by her! Her eyes are like sparks in the darkness; her silent demeanor excites them; they swing her round more and more wildly. Those who cannot dance with her must slake the fire within them with drink. The terrible winter is put to flight, and it is warm as in Hell itself. The blood is seething in their brains; it injects the whites of their eyes, and expresses itself in wanton frolic, in a need to dance till they drop, or to fight.
“Hanne is wild to-night—she has got her second youth,” says Elvira and the other girls maliciously.
Hold your tongues. No one shall criticize Hanne’s behavior! It is wonderful to touch her; the touch of her skin hurts one, as though she was not flesh and blood, but fire from Heaven! They say she has not had a bite of food for a week. The old woman and the child have had all there was. And yet she is burning! And see, she has now been dancing without a break for two whole hours! Can one understand such a thing? Hanne dances like a messenger from another world, where fire, not cold, is the condition of life. Every dancer leaves his partner in the lurch as soon as she is free! How lightly she dances! Dancing with her, one soars upward, far away from the cold. One forgets all misery in her eyes.