When he felt that they had stood too long silent, he said, “I must be off tomorrow. I’ve had a telegram from the minister.—But I swear to you that I’ll come back,” he added in a somewhat lowered voice as if he did not wish that the dead man should hear.
She comprehended that he was lying and that he never meant to see her again. And she nodded.
“Good-bye,” she said.
When he had gone, she went forward to the head of the coffin and looked at the dead man without thinking any further, for she was too weary. But as she stood there she remembered suddenly that she had loved him. She had loved other men too, but it came to her now that she had loved this one most. At that thought she felt the tears rise from deep down in her heart; she took his left hand, the one with the blue anchor, and wetted it with her kisses and her tears.
THE KISS
THERE was once a young girl and a very young man. They sat on a stone on a promontory that ran out into the lake, and the waves splashed at their feet. They sat silent, each wrapped in thought, and watched the sun go down.
He thought that he should very much like to kiss her. When he looked at her mouth, it occurred to him that this was just what it was meant for. He had, to be sure, seen girls prettier than she was, and he was really in love with someone else; but this other he could surely never kiss, because she was an ideal, a star, and what availed “the desire of the moth for the star”?
She thought that she should very much like to have him kiss her, so that she might have occasion to be downright angry with him and show how deeply she despised him. She would get up, pull her skirts tightly round her, give him a glance brimmed with icy contempt, and go off, erect and calm, without any unnecessary haste. But in order that he might not divine what she thought, she asked in a low, soft voice, “Do you think there is another life after this?”
He thought it would be easier to kiss her if he said yes. But he could not remember for certain what he might have said on other occasions about the same subject, and he was afraid of contradicting himself. He therefore looked her deep in the eyes and answered, “There are times when I think so.”
This answer pleased her extraordinarily, and she thought: At least I like his hair—and his forehead, too. It’s only a pity his nose is so ugly, and then of course he has no standing—he’s just a student who is reading for his examinations. That was not the sort of beau to vex her friends with.