No, she was not like herself. Her eyes were bigger and more restless than usual and her mouth was redder. And she could not sit still on her chair.
From time to time she cast a furtive glance at me, but more often she looked at the apothecary. And the apothecary looked that evening like a turkey-cock.
When the punch was passed around, we dropped the “mister.”
We young people went down on the meadow to play games. We tossed rings and played other games, and meanwhile the sun went down behind the hills and it grew dark.
We had laid the rings and the sword in a heap on the ground and were now standing in groups, whispering and smiling, while the dusk came on. But the young girl came up to me through the dusk and took me aside behind a shed.
“You must answer me a question,” said she. “Did the druggist really write his verses himself?” Her voice trembled, and she tried to look away as she spoke.
“Yes,” I said. “He wrote them last night. I heard him going back and forth in his room all night.”
But when I had said that, I felt a sting in my conscience, for I saw that she was a pretty and lovable child and that it was a great sin to deceive her so.
Who knows, I said to myself, who knows? Perhaps this is the sin of which the Scripture says that it cannot be forgiven.
The twilight deepened, it became night, and a star burned between the trees in the wood, where we were walking in pairs.