Tord read with a hoarse, trembling voice. He seemed to whisper the most extraordinary secrets of his life with a wild emotion. And still, had he not, in the presence of the uninitiated, been seized already at the very first line by a terrible doubt? Was this ... was this really poetry? He looked at his wife above the sheets of papers with the eyes of a beggar, but of a mad beggar beseeching prostrate adoration.
Dagmar responded rather badly to his expectations. At first she looked a little embarrassed, almost like a child when its parents speak of something it should not understand. Then she looked at the door and mumbled:
“Pray excuse your slave, but I am afraid the sausages will be burnt....”
“Let them burn then, idiot,” shouted Tord. After which he continued his reading in a more threatening voice.
Dagmar listened again. She sat quite still and good for a long while. Then her mouth began to twitch quite irresistibly, though she looked frightened.
Tord then hissed out the following lines:
“In a blue flash of lightning
With a blue hissing sound
Creaking
Manly