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.
But she has grown paler and paler; she is dancing the fire out of her body while others are dancing it in! Now she is quite white, and Olsen’s Elvira comes up and tugs at her dress, with anxiety in her glance. “Hanne, Hanne!” But Hanne does not see her; she is only longing for the next pair of arms—her eyes are closed. She has so much to make up for! And who so innocent as she? She does not once realize that she is robbing others of their pleasure. Is she suffering from vertigo or St. Vitus’s dance, in her widowhood?
Hold your tongue! How beautiful she is! Now she is growing rosy again, and opening her eyes. Fire darts from them; she has brought Pelle out of his corner and is whispering something to him, blushing as she does so; perhaps that precious promise that hitherto no one has been able to draw from her. Pelle must always be the lucky man!
“Pelle, why don’t you dance with me oftener? Why do you sit in the corner there always and sulk? Are you angry with me as you used to be, and why are you so hard and cold? And your clothes are quite stiff!”
“I come from outside all this—from the terrible winter, Hanne, where the children are crying for bread, and the women dying of starvation, and the men go about with idle hands and look on the ground because they are ashamed of their unemployment!”
“But why? It is still summer. Only look how cheerful every one is! Take me, then, Pelle!”
Hanne grows red, redder than blood, and leans her head on his shoulder. Only see how she surrenders herself, blissful in her unashamed ecstasy! She droops backward in his arms, and from between her lips springs a great rose of blood, that gushes down over the summer-blue dress.
Fastened to the spot by his terrible burden, Pelle stands there unable to move. He can only gaze at Hanne, until Cerberus takes her in his giant’s arms and bears her out. She is so light in her summer finery— she weighs nothing at all!
“Mazurka!” he bellows, as he returns, and goes commandingly along the ranks of dancers.