Anna Stjärnhök begins to laugh.
“You wanted a love-story. Now you have had one which has cost you both tears and pain.”
“Do you mean that you have lied?”
“Nothing but romance and lies, the whole thing!”
“You are too bad, Anna.”
“Maybe. I am not so happy, either.—But the ladies are awake, and the men are coming into the drawing-room. Let us join them!”
On the threshold she is stopped by Gösta Berling, who is looking for the young ladies.
“You must have patience with me,” he says, laughing. “I shall only torment you for ten minutes; but you must hear my verses.”
He tells them that in the night he had had a dream more vivid than ever before; he had dreamt that he had written verse. He, whom the world called “poet,” although he had always been undeserving of the title, had got up in the middle of the night, and, half asleep, half awake, had begun to write. It was a whole poem, which he had found the next morning on his writing-table. He could never have believed it of himself. Now the ladies should hear it.