Arla stepped back, and cast an almost frightened glance at the little footstool where she had been sitting at her mother's knee every evening since she was a little girl. All this seemed now so strange—it was no longer herself, it was a little younger sister, who used to sit there and confess to her mother all her dreams and all her little sorrows.
"I don't want to—I cannot read to-night."
Her mother laid the book down again, gave her daughter a mild, sad look and said, "Then remember, my child, that this was the consequence of your first ball."
Arla bent her head and left the room slowly. Her mother let her go; she found it wisest to leave her to herself until her emotion had somewhat worn itself out. Aria would not go into her own room; she dreaded Gurli's chatter; she had to be alone to get control over her thoughts. In the drawing-room she found her father.
"Is mamma in her room?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Is she alone? Are the children asleep?"
"Yes, mamma is alone."
"Well! Good-night, my girl." He kissed her lips and went into the bedroom.
Arla opened a window in the drawing-room to let out the hot air, and then began to walk up and down wrapped in a large shawl, enjoying the clear cold winter moonlight, which played over the snow and hid itself behind the trees in the park outside the window. There they were to meet to-morrow! Oh, if only he had said now, at once! If only she could slip out now in her thin gown, and he could wrap his cape around her to keep her warm—she did not remember that the men of to-day did not wear capes like Romeo—and if then they could have gone away together—far, far away from this prosaic world, where nobody understood that two hearts could meet and find each other from the first moment.