She hears his voice, his dear, strong voice; caressingly it sounds. He only speaks so to her. Why did he need furniture from the deanery for his empty rooms; why food, why servants? The old lady would never have missed anything. She hears his voice and sees his eyes.
Never, never before has she been so happy.
She knows that he has been married, but she does not remember it. How could she remember such a thing? She is twenty, he twenty-five. Shall he become the mean Broby clergyman, that smiling youth? The wailing of the poor, the curses of the defrauded, the scornful gibes, the caricatures, the sneers, all that as yet does not exist for him. His heart burns only with a pure and innocent love. Never shall that proud youth love gold so that he will creep after it in the dirt, beg it from the wayfarer, suffer humiliation, suffer disgrace, suffer cold, suffer hunger to get it. Shall he starve his child, torture his wife, for that same miserable gold? It is impossible. Such he can never be. He is a good man like all others. He is not a monster.
The beloved of his youth does not walk by the side of a despised wretch, unworthy of the profession he has dared to undertake!
Oh, Eros, not that evening! That evening he is not the Broby clergyman, nor the next day either, nor the day after.
The day after that she goes.
What a dream, what a beautiful dream! For these three days not a cloud!
She journeyed smiling home to her castle and her memories. She never heard his name again, she never asked after him. She wanted to dream that dream as long as she lived.
The Broby clergyman sat in his lonely home and wept. She had made him young. Must he now be old again? Should the evil spirit return and he be despicable, contemptible, as he had been?