FAIR HAVEN

AND

FOUL STRAND

BY

AUGUST STRINDBERG

NEW YORK

MCBRIDE, NAST & COMPANY

MCMXIV

CONTENTS
[FAIR HAVEN AND FOUL STRAND]
[THE DOCTOR'S FIRST STORY]
[THE DOCTOR'S SECOND STORY ]
[HERR BENGT'S WIFE]

[FAIR HAVEN AND FOUL STRAND]

The quarantine doctor was a man of five-and-sixty, well-preserved, short, slim and elastic, with a military bearing which recalled the fact that he had served in the Army Medical Corps. From birth he belonged to the eccentrics who feel uncomfortable in life and are never at home in it. Born in a mining district, of well-to-do but stern parents, he had no pleasant recollections of his childhood. His father and mother never spoke kindly, even when there was occasion to do so, but always harshly, with or without cause. His mother was one of those strange characters who get angry about nothing. Her anger arose without visible cause, so that her son sometimes thought she was not right in her head, and sometimes that she was deaf and could not hear properly, for occasionally her response to an act of kindness was a box on the ears. Therefore the boy became mistrustful towards people in general, for the only natural bond which should have united him to humanity with tenderness, was broken, and everything in life assumed a hostile appearance. Accordingly, though he did not show it, he was always in a posture of defence.

At school he had friends, but since he did not know how sincerely he wished them well, he became submissive, and made all kinds of concessions in order to preserve his faith in real friendship. By so doing he let his friends encroach so much that they oppressed him and began to tyrannise over him. When matters came to this point, he went his own way without giving any explanations. But he soon found a new friend with whom the same story was repeated from beginning to end. The result was that later in life he only sought for acquaintances, and grew accustomed to rely only upon himself. When he was confirmed, and felt mature and responsible through being declared ecclesiastically of age, an event happened which proved a turning-point in his life. He came home too late for a meal and his mother received him with a shower of blows from a stick. Without thinking, the young man raised his hand, and gave her a box on the ear. For a moment mother and son confronted each other, he expecting the roof to fall in or that he would be struck dead in some miraculous way. But nothing happened. His mother went out as though nothing had occurred, and behaved afterwards as though nothing unusual had taken place between them.

Later on in life when this affair recurred to his memory, he wondered what must have passed through her mind. She had cast one look to the ceiling as though she sought there for something—an invisible hand perhaps, or had she resigned herself to it, because she had at last seen that it was a well-deserved retribution, and therefore not called him to account? It was strange, that in spite of desperate efforts to produce pangs of conscience, he never felt any self-reproach on the subject. It seemed to have happened without his will, and as though it must happen.

Nevertheless, it marked a boundary-line in his life. The cord was cut and he fell out in life alone, away from his mother and domesticity. He felt as though he had been born without father and mother. Both seemed to him strangers whom he would have found it most natural to call Mr and Mrs So-and-so. At the University he at once noticed the difference between his lot and that of his companions. They had parents, brothers, and sisters; there was an order and succession in their life. They had relations to their fellow-men and obeyed secret social laws. They felt instinctively that he did not belong to their fold.

When as a young doctor he acted on behalf of an army medical officer for some time, he felt at once that he was not in his proper place, and so did the officers. The silent resistance which he offered from the first to their imperiousness and arbitrary ways marked him out as a dissatisfied critic, and he was left to himself.

In the hospital it was the same. Here he perceived at once the fateful predestination of social election, those who were called and those who were not called. It seemed as though the authorities could discern by scent those who were congenial to them. And so it was everywhere. He started a practice as a ladies' doctor, but had no luck, for he demanded straightforward answers to his questions, and those he never received. Then he became impatient, and was considered brutal. He became a Government sanitary officer in a remote part of the country, and since he was now independent of his patients' favour, he troubled himself still less about pleasing them. Presently he was transferred to the quarantine service, and was finally stationed at Skamsund.

When he had come here, now seventeen years ago, he at once began to be at variance with the pilots, who, as the only authorities on the island, indulged themselves in many acts of arbitrariness towards the inhabitants. The quarantine doctor loved peace and quietness like other men, but he had early learnt that warfare is necessary; and that it is no use simply to be passive as regards one's rights, but that one must defend them every day and every hour of the day. Since he was a new-comer they tried to curtail his authority and deprive him of his small privileges. The chief pilot had a prescriptive right to half the land, but the quarantine doctor had in his bay a small promontory where the pilots used to moor their private boats and store their fishing implements. The doctor first ascertained his legal rights in the matter, and when he found out that he had the sole right of using the promontory and that the pilots could store their fishing-tackle elsewhere, he went to the chief pilot and gave them a friendly notice to quit. When he saw that mere politeness was of no avail, he took stronger measures, had the place cleared and fenced off by his servants, turned it into a garden, and erected a simple pavilion in it. The pilots hailed petitions on the Government, but the matter was decided in his favour. The result was a lifelong enmity between him and the pilots. The quarantine doctor was shut in on his promontory and himself placed in quarantine. There he had now remained for seventeen years, but not in peace, for there was always strife. Either his dog fought with the pilots' dog, or their fowls came into his garden, or they ran their boats ashore on each other's ground. Thus he was kept in a continual state of anger and excitement, and even if there ever was quiet for a moment outside the house, inside there was the housekeeper. They had quarrelled for seventeen years, and once every week she had packed her things in order to go. She was a tyrant and insisted that her master should have sugar in all his sauces, even with fresh cod. During all the seventeen years she had not learnt how to boil an egg but wished the doctor to learn to eat half-raw eggs, which he hated. Sometimes he got tired of quarrelling, and then everything went on in Kristin's old way. He would eat raw potatoes, stale bread, sour cream and such-like for a whole week and admire himself as a Socrates; then his self-respect awoke and he began to storm again. He had to storm in order to get the salt-cellar placed on the table, to get the doors shut, to get the lamps filled with oil. The lamp-chimneys and wicks he had to clean himself, for that she could not learn.

"You are a cow, Kristin! You are a wretch who cannot value kindness. Do you like me to storm? Do you know that I abominate myself when I am obliged to get so excited. You make me bad, and you are a poisonous worm. I wish you had never been born, and lay in the depths of the earth. You are not a human being for you cannot learn; you are a cow, that you are! You will go? Yes, go to the deuce, where you came from!"

But Kristin never went. Once indeed she got as far as the steamer bridge, but turned round and entered the wood, whence the doctor had to fetch her home.

The doctor's only acquaintance was the postmaster at Fagervik, an old comrade of his student days, who came over every Saturday evening. Then the two drank and gossiped till past midnight and the postmaster remained till Sunday morning. They certainly did not look at life and their fellow-men from the same point of view, for the postmaster was a decided member of the Left Party, and the doctor was a sceptic, but their talk suited each other so well, that their conversation was like a part-song, or piece of music, for two voices, in which the voices, although varying, yet formed a harmony. The doctor, with his wider, mental outlook, sometimes expressed disapproval of his companion's sentiments somewhat as follows:

"You party-men are like one-eyed cats. Some see only with the left eye, others with the right, and therefore you can never see stereoscopically, but always flat and one-sidedly."

They were both great newspaper readers and followed the course of all questions with eagerness. The most burning question, however, was the religious one, for the political ones were settled by votes in the Reichstag and came to an end, but the religious questions never ended. The postmaster hated pietists and temperance advocates.

"Why the deuce do you hate the pietists?" the doctor would say. "What harm have they done you? Let them enjoy themselves; it doesn't affect me."

"They are all hypocrites," said the postmaster dogmatically.

"No," answered the doctor, "you cannot judge, for you have never been a pietist, but I have, and I was—deuce take me—no hypocrite. But I don't do it again. That is to say—one never knows, for it comes over one, or does not—it all depends on——"

"On what?"

"Hard to say. Pietism, for the rest, is a kind of European Buddhism. Both regard the world as an unclean place of punishment for the soul. Therefore they seek to counteract material influences, and in that they are not so wrong. That they do not succeed is obvious, but the struggle itself deserves respect. Their apparent hypocrisy results from the fact that they do not reach the goal they aim at, and their life always halts behind their teaching. That the priests of the church hate them is clear, for our married dairy farmers, card players and good diners do not love these apostles who show their unnecessariness and their defects. You know our clergy out there on the islands; I need not gossip about them, for you know. There you have the hypocrites, especially among the unfortunates, who after going through their examination have lost faith in all doctrines."

"Yes, but the pietists are enemies to culture."

"No, I don't find that. When I came to this island it was inhabited by three hundred besotted beasts who led the life of devils. And now—you see for yourself. They are not lovable nor lively, but they are, at any rate, quiet, so that one can sleep at night; and they don't fight, so that one can walk about the island without fear for one's life and limbs. In a word, the simplest blessings of civilisation were the distinct result of the erection of the prayer-house."

"The prayer-house which you never enter!"

"No, I don't belong to that fold. But have you ever been there?"

"I? No!"

"You should hear them once at any rate."

"Why?"

"You daren't!"

"Daren't! Is it dangerous?"

"So they say!"

"Not for me."

"Shall we wager a barrel of punch?"

The postmaster reflected an instant, not so much on the punch as on the doctor's suspecting him of cowardice.

"Done! I will go there on Friday. And you can carry the punch home in a boat, if you see anything go wrong with me."

The day came and the postmaster ate his dinner with the doctor, before he took his way, as agreed, to the prayer-house. He had told no one of his intention, partly because he feared that the preacher might aim at him, partly because he did not wish to get the reputation of being a pietist. After dinner he borrowed a box of snuff to keep himself awake, in spite of the doctor's assurance that he would not have any chance of sleeping. And so he went.

The doctor walked about his garden waiting for the result of the experiment to which many a stronger man than the postmaster had succumbed. He waited for an hour and a half; he waited two hours; he waited three. Then at last he saw the congregation coming out—a sign that it was over. But the postmaster did not appear. The doctor became uneasy. Another hour passed, and at last he saw his friend coming out of the wood. He came with a somewhat artificial liveliness and there was something forced in the springiness of his gait. When he saw the doctor, he made a slight wriggling movement with his legs, and shrugged his shoulders as though his clothes were too tight for him.

"Well?" asked the doctor. "It was tedious, wasn't it?"

"Yes," was the only answer.

They went down to the pavilion and took their seats opposite each other, although the postmaster was shy of showing his face, into which a new expression had come.

"Give me a pinch of snuff," said the doctor slyly.

The postmaster drew out the snuff-box, which had been untouched.

"You did not sleep?" resumed the doctor.

The postmaster felt embarrassed.

"Well, old fellow, you are not cheerful! What is the matter? Stop a minute!" The doctor indicated with his forefinger the space between his friend's eyes and nose as though he wished to show him something, "I believe ... you have been crying!"

"Nonsense!" answered the postmaster, and straightened himself up. "But, at any rate, you know I am not easily befooled, but as I said that fellow is a wizard."

"Tell us, tell us! Fancy your believing in wizards!"

"Yes, it was so strange." He paused for a while and continued:

"Can you imagine it? He preached, as was to be expected, especially to me. And in the middle of his preaching he told me all the secrets which, like everyone else, I have kept most jealously hidden from my childhood's days and earlier. I felt that I reddened, and that the whole congregation looked at me as though they knew it also, which is quite impossible. They nodded, keeping time with his words and looking at me simultaneously. Yes, they turned round on their seats. Even regarded as witchcraft it was——"

"Yes, yes, I know it, and therefore I take care. What it is I don't know, but it is something which I keep at arm's length. And it is the same with Swedenborg. I sat once in an ante-room waiting for admission. Behind me stood a book-case from which a book projected and prevented me from leaning my head back. I took the book down and it was part of Swedenborg's 'Arcana Coelestia.' I opened it at random and—can you imagine it? in two minutes a subject which just then occupied my thoughts was explained to me in such detail and with an almost alarming amount of expert knowledge, that it was quite uncanny. In two minutes I was quite clear regarding myself and my concerns."

"Well, tell us about it."

"No, I won't. You know yourself that the life we live in thought is secret, and what we experience in secret.... Yes, we are not what we seem."

"No." His friend broke in hastily. "No; our actions are very easy to control, but our thoughts ... ugh!"

"And thoughts are the deeds of the mind, as I have read somewhere. With our silent, evil thoughts we can infect others; we can transfer our evil purposes to others who execute them. Do you remember the case of the child murderess here ten years ago?"

"No, I was away then."

"She was a young children's nurse, innocent, fond of children, and had always been kind, as was elicited in examination. During the summer she was in the service of an actress up there in Fagervik. In August she was arrested for child murder. I was present in court when she was examined. She could not assign any reason for her action. But the judge wished to find out the reason, since she had no personal motive for it. The witnesses declared that she had loved the child, and she admitted it. At her second examination she was beside herself with remorse and horror at the terrible deed, but still behaved as though she were not really guilty, although she assumed the responsibility for the crime. At the third examination the judge tried to help her, and put the question, 'How did the idea come to you of murdering an innocent child whom you loved? Think carefully!' The girl cast a look of despair round the court, but when her eyes rested on the mother of the child, the actress, who was present for the first time, she answered the judge simply and naturally. 'I believe that my mistress wished it.' You should have seen the woman's face as these words were uttered. It seemed to me that her clothes dropped from her and she stood there exposed, and for the first time I thought of the abysmal depths of the human soul, over which a judge must walk with bandaged eyes, for he has no right to punish us in our interior life of thought; there we punish ourselves and that is what the pietists do."

"What you say is true enough, but I know also that my inner life is sometimes higher and purer than my outward life."

"I grant it. I have also an idea of my better ego, which is the best I know.... But tell me, what have you been doing for a whole hour in the wood?"

"I was thinking."

"You are not going to be a pietist, I suppose," broke in the doctor as he filled his glass.

"No, not I."

"But you no longer think the pietists are humbugs?"

To this the postmaster made no reply. But the drinking did not go briskly that evening, and the conversation was on higher topics than usual. Towards ten o'clock a terrible howling like that of wild beasts came over the Sound. It was from the garden of the hotel in Fagervik. Both the philosophers glanced in that direction.

"They are the crews of the cutters, of course," said the postmaster. "They are certainly fighting too. Yes, Fagervik is going down because of the rows at night. The holiday visitors run away for they cannot sleep, and they have thought of closing the beer-shops." "And of opening a prayer-house, perhaps?"

This question also remained unanswered, and they parted without knowing exactly how they stood with each other.

Meanwhile the report spread in Fagervik that the postmaster had been to the prayer-house, and when the next afternoon he found himself in his little circle at the hotel with the custom-house officer and the chief pilot, they greeted him with the important news:

"So! you have become a pietist!"

The postmaster parried the thrust with a jest, swore emphatically that it was untrue, and as a proof emptied his glass more thoroughly than usual.

"But you have been there."

"I was curious."

"Well, what did they say?"

The postmaster's face darkened, and as they continued to jest it occurred to him that it was cowardly and contemptible to mock at what in his opinion did not deserve mockery. Therefore he said seriously and decidedly: "Leave me in peace! I am not a pietist, but I think highly of them."

That was tantamount to a confession, and like an iron curtain something fell between him and his friends. The expression of their faces changed, and they seemed all at once strange to him. It was the most curious experience he had had, and it was painful at the same time.

He kept away for a few days and seemed to be in an introspective mood. After that, by degrees, he resumed his old relations to them, came again to the hotel, and was gradually the same as before, but not quite. For he had "pricked up his ears" as the phrase goes.

The Saturday evening tête-à-tête were resumed as before. Now that the postmaster had become more serious, and showed interest in the deeper things of life, the doctor considered the time had come to communicate to him some of the stock of observations which he had made on human life, without any reference to his own particular experience. It was reported that he had been married and had children but no one knew exactly the facts of the case.

After he had satisfied himself that the postmaster liked being read to aloud, he ventured to suggest to him that they should spend the Saturday evenings in this higher form of recreation, after they had first exchanged opinions on the questions of the day, as suggested by the events of the week. The subject-matter read would then provide occasion for further explanations and expressions of thought.

Accordingly, on Saturday evening after supper, while the weather outside was cold and wet, they sat in the best room of the doctor's house. After searching for some time in a cupboard the doctor fished out a manuscript; at the last moment he hesitated—perhaps because it was autobiographical. In order to give himself courage he began with some preliminary remarks.

"I don't think that, in your recollection, I have expressed my views on a certain question—the most important one of our time. This question, which touches the deepest things in life, and is treated most superficially because it is taken up in a spirit of partisanship.... I mean——"

"Nevermind! I know!"

"You are afraid of it, but I am not, for it is no question for me, but a riddle or an insoluble problem. You know that there are insoluble problems whose insolubility can be proved, but still men continue to investigate the unsearchable."

"Come to the point! Let us argue afterwards."

"And they have tried to make laws to regulate the behaviour of married people to each other; that is as though one should lay down rules for forming a friendship or falling in love. Well and good! I will tell you a story or two, and then we shall see whether the matter comes under the head of consideration at all, or whether the usual laws of thought apply in this case."

"Very well."

"One thing more. Don't think because quarantine is mentioned in the story that it is my story. That is buried deeper. Now we will begin."

[THE DOCTOR'S FIRST STORY]

I

They had gone off, taken the almost matter-of-course flight. An outcry rang through their social circle; people pressed their hands to the region of their heart, shuddered, lamented, condemned, according as each had figured to him or herself the terrible tragedy which had been played; two hearts had been torn asunder, two families raged against each other; there was a lonely husband and a deserted child; a desolate home, a career destroyed, entangled affairs which could not be put straight, and broken friendships. Two men were sitting in a restaurant and discussing the affair.

"But why did they run away? I think it disgusting!"

"On the contrary! I consider that ordinary decency requires that they should leave the field to the irreproachable husband; then at any rate they need not meet in the streets. Besides, it is more honest to be divorced than to form an illicit tie."

"But why could they not keep their faith and vows? We for our part hold out for life through grief and joy."

"Yes, and how does it look afterwards? Like an old bird's-nest in autumn! Other times, other manners."

"But it is terrible in any case."

"Not least for the runaways. Now it will be the turn of the man who took all the consequences on himself. He will be paid out."

"And so will she."

The story was as follows. The now divorced married pair had met three years before in a watering-place, and passed through all the stages of being in love in the normal way. They discovered, as usual, that they had been born for the special purpose of meeting each other and wandering through life hand in hand. In order to be worthy of her he gave up all doubtful habits and refined his language and his morals. She seemed to him an angel sent by God to open his eyes and to point him upwards. He overcame the usual difficulties regarding the publishing of the banns, convinced that those very difficulties were placed in his way in order to give him an opportunity of showing his courage and energy.

They read the scandalous anonymous letters which generally follow engagements together, and put them in the fire. She wept, it is true, over the wickedness of men, but he said the purpose of it was to test their faith in each other.

The period of their betrothal was one long intoxication. He declared that he did not need to drink any more, for her presence made him literally drunk. Once in a way they felt the weirdness of the solitude which surrounded them, for their friends had given them up, considering themselves superfluous.

"Why do people avoid us?" she asked one evening as they walked outside the town.

"Because," he answered, "men run away when they see happiness."

They did not notice that they themselves avoided intercourse with others, as they actually did. He, especially, showed a real dread of meeting his old bachelor friends, for they seemed to him like enemies, and he saw their sceptical grimaces, which were only too easy to interpret.

"See! there he is caught! To think of the old rascal letting himself be hoodwinked!" etc. For the young bachelors were of the opinion then, as now, that love was a piece of trickery which sooner or later must be unmasked.

But the conversation of the betrothed pair kept them above the banalities of everyday life, and they lived, as people say rightly, above the earth. But they began to feel afraid of the solitude which surrounded them and drove them together. They tried to go among other people, partly from the need of showing their happiness, and partly to quiet themselves. But when after the theatre they entered a restaurant, and she arranged her hair at the glass in the hall, he felt as though she was adorning herself for strangers. And when they sat down at the table, he became instantaneously silent, for her face assumed a new expression which was strange to him. Her glances seemed to parry the looks of strangers. They both became silent, and his face wore an anxious expression. It was a dismal supper, and they soon left.

When they came out she asked, somewhat out of humour at being disappointed of a pleasure, "Are you vexed with me?"

"No, my dear, I cannot be vexed with you. But I bleed inwardly when I see young fellows desecrate you with their looks." So their visits to the restaurant ceased.

The weeks before the marriage were spent in arranging their future dwelling. They had discussed carpets and curtains, had interviewed workmen and shopmen, and in so doing had descended from their ideal heights. Now they wanted to go out to get rid of these prosaic impressions. So they went, but with that ominous silence when the heads of a pair feel empty and someone seems to walk between them. He tried to rally himself and put her in good spirits but unsuccessfully.

"I hang too heavily upon you," she said, and let go of his arm. He did not answer, for he really felt some relief. That annoyed her and she drew nearer the wall. The conversation was at an end, and they soon found themselves before her door.

"Good night," she said curtly.

"Good night," he replied with equal curtness, and they parted obviously to their mutual relief. This time there was no kiss in the passage and he did not wait outside the glass door to watch her slender figure move gracefully up the first flight of stairs.

He went down the street with an elastic gait and drawing a deep breath of relief. He felt released from something oppressive, which nevertheless had been charming for three months. Pulling himself together, he mentally picked up the dropped threads of a past which now seemed strong and sincere. He hurried on, his ego exulted, and both his arms, as they swung, felt like wings.

That the affair was over he felt no doubt, but he saw no reason for it, and with wide-awake consciousness confronted a fact which he unhesitatingly accepted. When he came near his door he met an old friend whom, without further ado, he took by the arm, and invited to share his simple supper and to talk. His friend looked astonished, but followed him up the stairs.

They ate and drank, smoked and chatted till midnight, discussing every variety of topic, old reminiscences and affairs of State, the Reichstag and political economy. There was not a word regarding his betrothal and marriage, or even an allusion to them. It was a very enjoyable evening and he seemed to have gone back three months in his life. He noticed that his voice assumed a more manly tone, that he spoke his thoughts straight out as they came, without having to take the trouble to round off the corners of strong words to emphasise some expressions, and soften down others in order not to give offence. He felt as though he had found himself again, thrown off a strait-jacket, and laid aside a mask. He accompanied his friend downstairs to open the house-door.

"Well, you will be married in eight days," said the latter with the usual sceptical grimace. It was as though he had pressed a button and the door slammed to in answer.

When he came to his room, he felt seized with disgust; he took the things off the table, cleared up, swept the room, and then became conscious of what he had lost, and how low he had sunk.

He felt he had been unfaithful to his betrothed, because he had given his soul to another, even though that other was a man. He had lost something better than that which he thought he had gained. What he had found again was merely his old selfish, inconsiderate, comfortable, everyday ego, with its coarseness and uncleanness, which his friend liked because it suited his own.

And now it was all over, and the link broken for ever! The great solitude would resume its sway, the ugly bachelor life begin again. It did not occur to him to sit down and write a letter, for he felt it would be useless. Therefore he tried to weary himself in order to obtain sleep, soaked his whole head in cold water, and so went to bed. The little ceremony of winding up his watch made, to-night, a peculiar impression on him. Everything had to be renewed at night, even time itself. Perhaps her love only needed a night's rest in order to recommence.

When he awoke the following morning, the sun shone into the room. An indescribable feeling of quietness had taken possession of him, and he felt that life was good as it was, yes, better to-day than usual, for his soul felt at home again after a long excursion. He dressed himself and went to his office, opened his letters, read the newspaper, and felt quite calm all the time. But this unnatural calm began at last to make him uneasy. He felt an increasing nervousness and a feverishness over his whole body. The vacuum began to be filled again with her soul; the electric band had been stretched, and the stream cut off, but it was still there; there had only been a break in the current, and now all the recollections rushed upon him, all their beautiful and great experiences, all the elevated feelings and great thoughts which they had amassed together, all the dream-world in which they had lived, so unlike the present world of prose where they now found themselves.

With a feeling of despair he betook himself to his correspondence in order to conceal his emotions, and began to answer letters with calmness, order, and clearness. Offers were accepted on certain conditions, and declined on definite grounds. He went into questions of coffee and sugar, exchange prices and accounts with unusual clearness and decision.

A clerk brought him a letter, which he saw at once was from her.

"The messenger waits for an answer," he said.

Without looking up from his desk, the merchant had at once decided and replied: "He needn't wait."

In that moment he had said to himself: "Explanations, reproaches, accusations—how can I answer such things?"

And the letter lay unopened while his business correspondence went on with stormy celerity.

When his fiancée had parted from him on the previous evening her first emotion had been anger—anger to think that he, the merchant, had dared to despise her. She herself belonged to an official's family and had dreamt of playing a rôle in society. His warm and faithful affection had made her gradually forget this. Since he was never weary of telling her what an ennobling influence she exercised on his life, and since she herself perceived how he became refined and beautiful under her hand, she felt herself to be a higher being. His steady veneration kindled her self-esteem and she grew and blossomed in the sunshine which his love spread around her. When that was suddenly extinguished, it grew cold and dark around her; she felt herself dwindle down to her original insignificance, shrivel and disappear. This discovery that she had been the victim of an error and that his love was the cause of her new life and the enlargement of her personality, aroused her hatred against the man who had given her such clear proof that her existence depended on him and on his love. Now that he was no longer her lover, he became the tradesman whom she despised.

"A fellow who sells coffee and sugar!" she said to herself, as she fell asleep, "I could change him for a better one."

But when she awoke after a good night's sleep, she felt alarmed at the disgrace of being given up. A broken engagement, after two offers, would always cast a shadow over her life and make it difficult to procure another fiancé.

In a spiteful mood she sat down to write the letter, in which in a lofty, insulting tone she demanded an explanation, and at the same time asked him to come and see her.

When the messenger returned with the news that there was no answer she fell in a rage, and prepared to go out. She intended to find him in his office, where she had never yet been, and before the eyes of his clerks throw his ring on the ground to show how deeply she despised him. So she went.

She stood outside the door and knocked. But since no one opened or answered she entered and stood in the hall. Through the glass pane of the inner door she saw her betrothed bending over the large ledger, his face intent and serious. She had never seen him at work before. And when at work every man, even the most insignificant, is imposing. Sacred work, which makes a man what he is, invested his appearance with the dignity of concentrated strength, and she was seized with a feeling of respect for him which she could not throw off.

Just then he was inspecting in the ledger the entries of the expenses of furnishing their house.

They had absorbed his savings during the ten years he had been in business, and though not petty-minded, he thought with sorrow and bitterness, how they were all thrown away. He sighed and looked up in order not to see the tell-tale figures. Then, all of a sudden, he noticed behind the glass pane of the door, like a crayon drawing in a frame, a pale face and two large eyes full of an expression of pain and sympathy. He rose and stood reverently, mute in his great, virile grief, interrogative and trembling. Then he saw in her looks how the lost love had returned, and with that all was said.

When after a while they were walking past Skeppsholm, bright with their recovered happiness, he asked: "What happened to us yesterday?" (He said "us" for he did not wish to raise the question whose fault it was.)

"I don't know; I cannot explain it; but it was the most terrible experience I have had. We will never do it again!"

"No! we will never do it again. And now, Ebba, it is for our whole lives, you and I!"

She pressed his arm, fully convinced that after this fiery trial, nothing in the world could separate them, so far as it depended on themselves.

II

And they were married. But instead of hiding their happiness in their beautiful clean home, they set out on a journey among strange, indifferent, curious, and even hostile people. Then they went from hotel to hotel, were stared at at tables d'hôte, got headaches in museums, and in the evening were dumb with fatigue and put out of humour by mishaps.

Tom away from his work and his surroundings, the industrious man found it difficult to collect himself. When his thoughts went back to the business matters which he had left in the hands of others, he was inattentive and tiresome. They both longed for home, but were ashamed to return and to be received with ridicule.

The first week they occupied the time by talking over the recollections of their engagement; during the second week they discussed the journeys of the first. They never lived in the present but in the past. When there was an interval of dullness or silence he had always comforted her with the thought that their intercourse would be easier when they had amassed a store of common memories, and had learnt to avoid each other's antipathies. Meanwhile, out of consideration, they had borne with these and suppressed their own peculiarities and weaknesses as well-brought-up people usually do. This led to a feeling of restraint and being on one's guard which was exhausting; and the time had come for making important discoveries. Since he possessed more self-control than she did, he was careful not to say too much, but concealed one inclination and habit after another, while she revealed all hers. As he loved her, he wished to be agreeable, and therefore learned to be silent. The result was that with all her inherited habits, peculiarities, and prejudices she had so insinuated herself into his life that he began to feel himself attenuated and annihilated.

One evening the young wife was seized with a sudden desire to praise her sister, a hateful coquette, whom her husband disliked because she had tried, from selfish motives, to break their engagement. He listened to his wife in respectful silence, now and then murmuring an indistinct assent. At last his wife's praise of her sister mounted to a paean, and though he thought her affection for her relatives a fine trait in her character, he could not entirely place himself in her skin nor see with her eyes. So he took refuge in the kind of silence which is more eloquent than plain words. This silence was accompanied by a gnawing of the lips and a violent perspiration. All the words and opinions he had suppressed found mute expression in these movements of his lips—he merely "marked time" as actors say—and the breaths which were not used in forming words, he emitted through his nose. Simultaneously the pores of his skin opened as so many safety-valves for his suppressed emotions, and it became really unpleasant to have him at the table.

The young wife did not conceal her annoyance, for she feared no revenge. She made an ugly gesture, which always ill becomes a woman; she held her nose with both fingers, looking around to those present as if to ask whether she was not right!

Her husband became pale, rose, and went out. Several people were sitting close by who witnessed the unpleasant scene. When he came out on the streets of the foreign town, he unbuttoned his waistcoat and breathed freely. And then his thoughts took their own course ruthlessly.

"I am becoming a hypocrite simply out of consideration for her. One lie is piled up on another, and some day it will all come down with a crash. What a coarse woman she is! And it was from her that I believed I should learn and be refined into a higher being. It is all optical delusion and deceit. All this 'love' is merely a piece of trickery on the part of nature to dazzle one's sight."

He tried to picture to himself what was now happening in the dining-room. She would naturally weep and appeal with her eyes to those present as if to ask whether she was not very unfortunate with such a husband. It was indeed her habit so to appeal with her eyes, and when he expected an answer from her, she always turned her looks on those around as if asking for help against her oppressor. He was always treated as a tyrant, although out of pure kindness he had made himself her slave. There was no help for it!

He found himself down by the harbour, and caught sight of the swimming-baths—that was just what he wanted. Quickly he plunged into the sea, and swam far out into the darkness. His soul, tortured by mosquito-stings and nettle-pricks, was able to cool itself, and he felt how he left a wake of dirt behind him. He lay on his back and gazed at the starry sky, but at the same moment heard a whistling and splashing behind him. It was a great steamer coming in, and he had to get out of the way to save His life. He made for the lamp-lit shore and saw the hotel with all its lights.

When he had dressed, he felt an unmeasured sorrow—sorrow over his lost paradise. At the same time all bitterness had passed away.

In this mood he entered his room and found his wife seated at the writing-table. She rose and threw herself into his arms without a word of apology; naturally enough he did not desire it, and she had no idea of having done wrong.

They sat down and wept together over their vanished love, for that it had gone there was no doubt. But it had gone without their will, and they sorrowed over it, as over some dear friend which they had not killed but could not save. They were confronted by a fact before which they were helpless; love the good genius who magnifies every trifle, rejuvenates what is old, beautifies what is ugly, had abandoned them, and life stretched before them in naked monotony.

But it did not occur to them that they would be separated or were separated, for their grief itself was an experience they shared, which held them together. They were also united in a common grudge against Fate, which had so deceived them in their tenderest emotions. In their great dejection they were not capable of such a strong feeling as hate. They only felt resentment and indignation at Fate, which was their scapegoat and lightning-conductor.

They had never talked so harmoniously and so intimately before, and while their voices assumed a more affectionate tone, they formed a firm resolve to go home and commence their domestic life. He talked himself into a state of enthusiasm at the thought of home, where one could exclude all evil influences, and where peace and harmony would reign. She also dilated on the same topic with similar warmth till they had forgotten their sorrow. And when they had forgotten it, they smiled as before, and behold! love was again there, and not dead at all; its death was also a delusion and so was all their grief.

III

He had realised his youthful dream of a wife and a home, and for eight days the young wife also thought that her dream had come true. But on the ninth day she wanted to go out.

"Where?" he asked.

"Say, yourself!"

No, she must say. He proposed the opera, but Wagner was being performed there, and she could not bear him. The theatre? No, there they had Maeterlinck, and that was silly. He did not wish to go to an operetta, for they always ridiculed what he now regarded as sacred. Nor did he like the circus, where there were only horses and queer women.

So the discussion went on and they privately discovered a great quantity of divergences in tastes and principles. In order to please her, he proposed an operetta, but she would not accept the sacrifice. He suggested that they should give a party, but then they discovered that there was no one to invite, for they had separated from their friends, and their friends from them.

So they sat there, still in harmony, and considered their destiny together, without having yet begun to blame each other. They stayed at home, and felt bored.

Next day, the same scene was repeated. He now saw that his happiness was at stake; therefore he took courage, and said in a friendly way but decidedly, "Dress yourself and we will go to an operetta." She beamed, put on her new dress, and was quickly ready. When he saw her so happy and pretty, he felt a stab in his heart, and thought to himself, "Now she brightens up, when she can dress for others and not for me." When he then conducted her to the theatre, he felt as though he were escorting a stranger, for her thoughts were already in the auditorium, which was her stage, where she wished to appear, and where she could now appear under her husband's escort without being insulted.

Since they could already divine each other's thoughts, this alienation, while they were on the way, changed into something like hostility. They longed to be in the theatre in order to find something to divert their emotions, though he felt as though he were going to an execution.

When they came to the ticket-office there were no tickets left.

Then her face changed, and when she looked at him, and thought she saw an expression of satisfaction, which possibly was latent there, she broke out, "That pleases you?"

He wished to deny it, but could not, for it was true. On the way home he felt as though he were dragging a corpse with him, and that a hostile one.

The fact that she had discovered his very natural thought, which he had self-denyingly repressed, hurt him like a rudeness for one has no right to punish the thoughts of another. He would have borne it more easily if there had been no tickets left, for he was already accustomed to be a scapegoat. But now he lamented over his lost happiness, and that he had not the power to amuse her.

When she observed that he was not angry, but only sad, she despised him. They came home in ominous silence; she went straight to her bedroom and shut the door. He sat down in the dining-room, where he lit the lamps and candles, for the darkness seemed to be closing round him.

Then he heard a cry from the bedroom, the cry of a child, but of a grown one. When he came in he saw a sight which tore his heart. She was on her knees, her hands stretched towards him, wailing as she wept, "Don't be angry with me, don't be hard; you put out the light round me, you stifle me with your severity; I am a child that trusts life and must have sunshine."

He could find no answer, for she seemed sincere. And he could not defend himself, for that meant arraigning her thoughts, which he also could not do.

Dumb with despair, he went into his room and felt crushed. He had pillaged her youth, shut her up, torn out her joy by the roots. He had not the light which this tender flower needed, and she withered under his hand. These self-reproaches broke down all the self-confidence he had hitherto possessed; he felt unworthy of her love, or of any woman's, and felt himself a murderer who had killed her happiness.

After he had suffered all these pangs of conscience he began to examine himself calmly and with sober common sense.

"What have I done?" he asked himself. "What have I done to her? All the good that I could; I have done her will in everything. I did not wish to go out in the evening, when I had come home after the work of the day, and I did not wish to see an operetta. An operetta was formerly a matter of indifference to me, but now it is distasteful, since through my love for her I have entered another sphere of emotion which I do not hesitate to call a higher one. How foolish of me! I had the idea that she would draw me out of the mire, but she draws me down; she has drawn me down the whole time. Then it is not she but my love which draws upward, for there is a higher and a lower. Yes, the sage was right who said, 'Men marry to have a home to come to to, women marry to have a home to go out of.' Home is not for the woman but for the man and the child. All women complain of being shut up at home, and so does mine, although she goes about the whole morning paying visits, and haunting cafés and shops."

He began to work his way out of this slough of despond, and found himself on the side where the fault was not. But again he saw the heart-rending spectacle of his young wife on her knees begging him, with outstretched hands, not to kill her youth and brightness with his severity. Since it was foreign to his nature to act a part, he felt sure that she was not doing so, and felt again like a criminal, so that he was tempted to commit suicide, for the mere fact of his existence crushed her happiness.

But again his sense of justice was aroused, for he had no right to take the blame on himself when he did not deserve it. He was not hard but he was serious, and it was just his seriousness which had made the deepest impression on the young girl and decided her to prefer him to other frivolous young men. He had not wished to kill her joy; on the contrary he had done everything in his power to procure for her the quiet joys of domesticity; he had not even wished to deny her the ambiguous pleasure of the operetta, but had sacrificed himself and accompanied her thither. What she had said was therefore simply nonsense. And yet her grief had been so deep and sincere. What was the meaning of it?

Then came the answer. It was the girl's leave-taking of youth—which was inevitable. It was therefore as natural as it was beautiful—this outbreak of despair at the brevity of spring. But he was not to blame for it, and if his wife perhaps in a year was to become a mother, it was now the right time to bid farewell to girlish joys in order to prepare for the higher joys of maternity.

He had, therefore, nothing to reproach himself with, and yet he did reproach himself with everything. With a quick resolve, he shook off his depression and went to his wife, firmly determining not to say a word in his defence, for that meant extinguishing her love, but simply to invite her to reconciliation without a reckoning.

He found his wife on the point of being weary of solitude, and she would have welcomed the society of anyone, even that of her husband, rather than be quite alone.

Then they came to an agreement to give a party and to invite his friends and hers, who would be sure to come. This evening their need for domestic peace and comfort was so mutual that they agreed, without any difficulty, who should be invited and who not.

They closed the day by drinking a bottle of champagne. The sparkling drink loosened her tongue and now she took the opportunity to make him gentle and jesting reproaches for his egotism and discourtesy towards his wife. She looked so pretty as she raised herself on tiptoe above him, and she seemed so much greater and nobler when she had rolled all her faults upon him, that he thought it a pity to pull her down, and therefore went to sleep laden with all the defects and shortcomings which he had taken on himself.

When he awoke the next morning he lay still in order to think over the events of the past evening. And now he despised himself for having kept silence and refrained from defending himself. Now he perceived how the whole of their life together was built upon his silence and the suppression of his personality. For if he had spoken yesterday, she would have gone—she always threatened to go to her mother when he "ill-treated" her, and she called it "ill-treatment" every time that he was tired of making himself out worse than he was. Here they were building on falsity, and the building would collapse some day when he ventured on a criticism or personal remark regarding her.

Reverence, worship, blind obedience—that was the price of her love—he must either pay it, or go without it.

The party took place. The husband, as a good host, did all he could to efface himself and bring his wife into prominence. His friends, who were gentlemen, behaved to her in their turn with all the courtesy which they felt was due to a young wife.

After supper music was proposed. There was a piano in the house, but the wife could not play, and the husband did not want to. A young doctor undertook the task, and since he had to choose his own programme, he had resort to his favourite, Wagner. The mistress of the house did not know what he was playing but did not like the deep seriousness of it. When at last the thunder ceased, her husband sat uneasily there, for he could surmise what was coming.

As a ladylike hostess, she had to say something. She thought a simple "thanks" insufficient, and asked what the music was.

Then it came out—Wagner!

Her husband felt the look which he feared, which told him that he was a traitor who perhaps had wished to entice her to praise in ignorance "the worst music which she knew." During the time of their engagement she had certainly listened attentively to her fiance's long speeches in defence of Wagner, but immediately after their marriage, she had declared openly that she could not bear him. Therefore her husband had never played to her, and she feigned not to know that he could play. But now she felt insidiously surprised, and her husband received the beforementioned look which told him what he had to expect.

The guests had gone, and husband and wife sat there alone.

In his father's house he had learnt never to speak anything but good of departed guests, but rather to be silent. She had also heard something of the kind, but here she felt no need of restraint. So now she began to criticise his friends; they were, to put it briefly, tedious.

He gnawed his cigar in silence, for to dispute about likings and taste in this case would be unreasonable.

But she also considered them discourteous. She had been told that young men should say pleasant things.

"Did they venture to say anything unpleasant?" he asked, feeling uneasy lest anyone should have forgotten himself.

"No, not exactly."

Then came a shower of petty criticisms; someone's tie was not straight, another had too long a nose, another drawled, and then, "the fellow who played Wagner!"

"You are not kind," said her husband with a lame attempt to defend his friends.

"Yes! and the friends you trust in! You should only have heard and seen the words and looks which I heard and saw. They are false to you."

He continued to smoke and kept silence, but he thought how low he had sunk to deny his old and tried friends; how despicable it was to plead for forgiveness with his eyes for the performance of Wagner. His thoughts ran parallel with her loud chatter, and he spoke them in silence.

"You despise my friends because they do not court their friend's wife, do not pay her little compliments on her figure and dress; and you hate them because you feel how my strength grows in the circle of their sympathies for me. You hate them as you hate me, and would hate anyone else who was your husband."

She must have felt the effect of these thoughts, for her volubility slackened, and when he cast a glance at her, she seemed to have shrunk together. Immediately afterwards she rose, on the pretext that she felt freezing. As a matter of fact, she was trembling and had red flames on her cheeks.

That night he observed for the first time that he had at his side an ugly old woman who had enamelled her face with bright cosmetics and plaited her hair like a peasant woman.

She did not bother herself to appear at her best before him but was already free and easy and cynical enough to make herself repugnant by disclosing the unbeautiful secrets of the toilet.

Then for a moment he was released from his enchantment, and continued to think of flight till sleep had pity on him.

A couple of weeks passed in dull silence. He could not get rid of the thought that it was a pity about her, and when she was bored, it was his fault for the moment, because he was her husband—for the moment. To seek for others' society was now no longer possible, since his friends had been rejected, and she had no more pleasure in her own. They tried to go out each his own way but always returned home.

"You find it hard to be away from me, in spite of all!" she said.

"And you?" he answered.

She remained compliant and indifferent, no longer angry, so that they could talk, i.e. he ventured to answer.

"My jailor!" she said on one occasion.

"Who is in jail, you or I?" he answered.

When they perceived that they were each other's prisoners, they smiled at the relationship and began to examine the witchcraft of which they were victims. They went back in memory and lived over again the engagement period and their wedding journey. Consequently they lived always in the past, never in the present.

Then came the great moment he had waited for as a liberation—the announcement of her expecting to be a mother. Her longings would now have an object, and she would look forward instead of backward. But even here he had miscalculated.

Now she was angry with him, for her beauty would wither away, and it was no use his trying to comfort her by saying she would get up rejuvenated with recovered beauty, and that the crowning happiness awaited her. She treated him like a murderer, and could not look at him for his mere scent aroused her dislike. In order to obtain light on the matter, he asked their doctor. The latter laughed and explained to him that in such cases women always thought they smelt something;—this was either pure imagination or a physical perversion of the olfactory nerve.

When at last this stage was over, a certain calm succeeded which he was short-sighted enough to enjoy. Since he was now sure of having his wife in the house he perhaps showed that he was happy and thankful for it. But he should not have done so, for now she saw the matter from a new point of view.

"Ah! now you think you have me fast, but just wait till I am up again!"

The look which accompanied the threat gave him to understand what would happen. Now he began a battle with himself whether he should await the arrival of the child or go away first, in order to avoid the wrench of parting from it.

Since the married pair had entered into such a close relationship that one could hear the thoughts of the other, he could keep no secrets from her which she did not seize upon forthwith.

"I know well enough that you contemplate deserting us and casting us on the street."

"That is strange," he remarked; "it is you who have threatened the whole time to go off with the child, as soon as it came. So whatever I do is wrong; if I stay you go, and then I am both unhappy and ridiculous; if I go you are the martyr, and I am unhappy and a scoundrel to boot! That comes of having to do with women!"

How they got through the nine months was to him a puzzle. The last part of the time was the most tolerable, for she had begun to love the unborn child, and love imparted to her a higher beauty than she had before. But when he told her so, she did not believe him, and when she observed that he was lulling himself to sleep with dreams of perpetual happiness by her side she broke out again, saying: "You think you have got me safe now."

"My dear," he answered, "when we vowed to each other to be man and wife, I believed that I would belong to you and you to me, and I hoped that we should hold together so that the child should be born in a home, and be brought up by its father and mother."

And so on ad infinitum.

The child came, and the mother's joy was boundless. Ennui had disappeared and the man breathed freely, but he should have done so more imperceptibly. For two sharp eyes saw it and two keen looks said: "You think that I am tied by the child!"

On the third day the little one had lost the charm of novelty and was handed over to a nurse. Then dressmakers were summoned. Now he knew what was coming. From that hour he went about like a man condemned to death, waiting for his execution. He packed two travelling-bags which he hid in his wardrobe, ready to fly at the given signal.

The signal was given two days after his wife got up. She had put on a dress of an extremely showy cut and of the colour called "lamp-shade."

He took her out for a walk and suffered unspeakably when he saw that she whom he loved, attracted a degree of attention which he found obnoxious. Even the street urchins pointed with their fingers at the overdressed lady.

From that day he avoided going out with her. He stayed at home with the child, and lamented that he had a wife who made herself ridiculous.

Her next step to freedom was the riding-school. Through the stable the doors to society were opened for her. By means of horses one made acquaintances in the upper circles. Horses and dogs form the transition stage to the world from which one peers down in order to be able to discover the pedestrians on the dusty highways. The rider on horseback is six ells high instead of three, and he always looks as though he wished that those who walk should look up to him. The stable also was her means of introduction to a lieutenant who was a baron. Their hearts responded to each other, and since the baron was a clean-natured man, he decidedly refused to go through the stages of guest and friend of the house. Therefore they went off together, or rather, fled.

Her husband remained behind with the child.

IV

The baron jumped into the Stockholm express at Södertälje where he had arranged to meet her. Everything had been carefully arranged for them to be alone together at last, but Fate had other designs. When the baron entered the railway carriage he found his beloved sitting wedged in tightly among strangers, so tightly that there was no room for him. A glance in the adjoining coupe showed him that it was full also, and he had to stand in the corridor. Rage distorted his face, and when he tried to greet her with a secret and loving smile, he only showed his back teeth, which she had never seen before. To make matters worse, he had, in order not to be noticed, put on mufti. She had never seen him in this, and his spring coat looked faded, now that it was autumn. Some soft summer showers in the former year had caused the cloth to pucker near the seams, so that it lay in many small wave-like folds. Since it had been cut according to the latest fashion it gave him the appearance of having sloping shoulders which continued the neck down to the arms with the same ignoble outlines as those of a half-pint bottle. He perspired with rage, and a fragment of coal had settled firmly on his nose. She would like to have jumped up and with her lace handkerchief wiped away the black smut but dared not. He did not like to look at her for fear of displeasing her, and therefore remained standing in the corridor with his back towards her.

When they reached Katrineholm they had to dine if they did not wish to remain hungry till evening. Here the man and the hero had to show himself, and stand the ordeal or he was lost. With trembling calves and puckered face he followed his lady out of the train and across the railway lines. Here he fell on his knee, so that his hat slipped to the back of his head and remained sticking there like a military cap. But the position which made the latter look smart did not suit the unusual hat. In a word it was not his good day, and he had no luck.

When they entered the dining-saloon, they looked as though they had quarrelled inwardly, as though they despised each other, were ashamed before each other, and mutually wished themselves apart.

His nerves were entirely out of order, and he could not control a single muscle. Without knowing what he was doing, he pushed her forward to the table saying, "Hurry up!"

The table was already surrounded by passengers, who fell on the viands in scattered order and therefore could not open their ranks. The baron made a sally and finally succeeded in seizing a plate, but as he wedged in his arm to get a fork, his hand encountered another hand which belonged to the person he least of all wished to meet just then.

It was his senior officer, a major who presided at military examinations.

At the same moment a whisper passed through the crowd.

They were recognised! He stood there as though naked among nettles. His neck swelled so unnaturally and grew so red that his cheeks seemed to form part of it. He could not understand how people's looks could have the effect of gun-bullets. He was literally fusilladed and collapsed. His companion vanished from his mind; he could only think of the major and the military examination which might destroy his future.

But she had seen and understood; she turned her back on everyone and went out. She got into the wrong coupe but it was empty. He came afterwards and they were alone at last.

"That's a nice business, isn't it?" he hissed, striking his forehead. "To think of my letting myself be enticed into such an adventure! And the major too! Now my career is at an end!"

That was the theme which was enlarged on with variations till Linköping. Hunger and thirst both contributed their part to it. It was terrible.

After Linköping they both felt that the mutual reproaches they had hitherto held back must find a vent. But just at the right moment they remembered her husband and attacked him. It was his fault; he was the tyrant, the idiot of course, "a fellow who played Wagner," a devil. It was he who had given the major a hint, no doubt.

"Yes, I believe you," said she with the firmest conviction.

"Do you? I know it," answered the baron. "They meet on the Stock Exchange, where they speculate in shares together. And do you know what I begin to suspect? Your husband, the 'wretch' as we call him, has never loved you."

The wife considered a moment. Whether it was that her husband's love was indubitable, or that it was necessary to suppose that he loved her, if she was to have the honour of having made a fool of him—enough, he must have loved her, since she was so lovable.

"No! now you are unjust," she ventured to say. She felt herself somewhat elevated by being able to speak a good word of an enemy, but the baron took it as a reproach against himself and recommenced.

"He loved you? He who shut you up and would not accompany you to the riding-school! He——"

The safety-conductor seemed used up, and threatened to deflect the lightning to one side in a dangerous way. So they took up a new thread of conversation—the question of food. Since this could not be settled before Naujö, which was still half a day distant, they soon dropped it again. In her extremity, and carried away by a torrent of thoughts and emotions which she could not resist, she hazarded a conjecture as to how her child was. To this his answer was a yawn which split his face like a red apple to the uvula where some dark molars resembled the core of it. Gradually he let himself slide down into a reclining attitude on the sofa, but remembering that he ought to make some apology for his unseemly behaviour, he yawned and said: "Excuse me, but I am so sleepy."

Immediately afterwards he went to sleep, and after a time he snored. Since she was no longer under the influence of his looks and words, she could reflect quietly again, see who her travelling companion was, and began, involuntarily, to institute comparisons. Her husband had never behaved like this; he was refined compared with the baron, and was always well-dressed.

The baron, who had drunk much punch the day before, began now to perspire and smelt of vinegar. Besides that, he always had a stable-like smell about him.

She went out into the corridor, opened a window, and as though released from enchantment, she saw the whole extent of her loss and the terrible nature of her position. As the spring landscape swept past, a little lake with willows and a cottage, she remembered vividly how she had dreamt of a summer holiday with the child. Then she broke into weeping, and tried to throw herself out but was held back. She remained standing a long time, and stamped with her feet as though she wished to stop the train and make it go backwards. All the time she heard his snoring, like grunts from a pigsty at feeding-time. And for this ... creature, she had left a good home, a beautiful child, and a husband.

The snoring ceased, and the baron began to employ his recuperated thinking faculties in considering the situation and settling his future. He did not know how to be sad; instead of that he became angry. When he saw her holding her handkerchief to her eyes, he got in a rage, and took it as a personal reproach. But quarrelling was tedious and unpleasant; therefore assuming a light tone, and caressing her as one might a horse, he clicked with his tongue and said: "Cheer up, Maja!"

Two such opposite moods, in colliding, cut each other and each fell on its own side of the knife. A dead silence was the result. They were no longer one person, but two, irrevocably two, who did not belong together.

Yet another half-day in wretchedness and boredom; a night with changes of train in the darkness, and at last they were in Copenhagen. There they were unknown and had no need to feel embarrassed. But when they entered the dining-saloon, she began to pass the "searchlight" of her looks, as he called it, over all those present, so that when the baron looked at her he never saw her eye except in profile. At last he became angry and kicked her shin under the table. Then she turned away and appealed with her eyes to the company. She could not look at him—so hateful did he seem to her. Upstairs in their room the corks were drawn out. They reached the stage of recriminations. His spoilt career was her fault ... she had lost her child and home through him. So it went on till past midnight when sleep had mercy on them.

Then next morning they sat at the breakfast-table, silent and ghastly to look at. She remembered her honeymoon journey and very much the same situation. They had nothing to say to each other, and he was as tedious as her husband had been. They kept silence and were ashamed of being in each other's presence. They were conscious of their mutual hatred, and poisoned each other with nerve-poison.

At last the deliverer came. The waiter approached with a telegram for the baron, who opened and read it at a glance. He seemed to consider, cast a calculating glance at his enemy, and after a pause said: "I am recalled by the commanding officer."

"And mean to leave me here?"

He changed his resolve in a second: "No, we will travel back together." A plan suggested itself and he told her of it. "We will sail across to Landskrona; there no one knows you, and you can wait for me."

The idea of sailing had a smack of the adventurous and heroic about it, and this trifle outweighed all other considerations. She was kindled, kindled him, and they packed at once. The prospect of leaving her, for however short a time, restored his courage.

Accordingly, some hours later, he took his seat in a hired sailing-boat with his beloved by the foresail and put off from Lange Linie like a sea-robber with his bride, blustering, ostentatious and gorgeous.

In order to conceal his plan he had only spoken to the owner of the boat of a pleasure-trip in the Sound. His intention was to telegraph from Landskrona and send the money due for the boat and have the boat itself towed by a steamer.

As they were putting off from shore, the boat owner stood near and watched them. But when he saw that they were directing their course to the Island Hven, he put his hands to his mouth and shouted: "Don't go too near Hven," and something else which was carried away by the wind.

"Why not Hven?" asked the baron aloud. "The shore is steep, so that there are no rocks under water."

"Yes, but if he tells us so, he must have had some reason for it," she objected.

"Don't talk nonsense! Look after the foresail!"

The wind blew a light gale on the open sea, and since there was a considerable distance between the foresail and the stern there was no need for conversation, much to the baron's relief.

Their course was directed towards the south-east corner of Hven, though at first not noticeably so. But when she at last saw whither they were going, she called out: "Don't steer for Hven!"

"Hold your——!" answered the baron and tacked.

After an hour's good run they had come abreast of the white island and a light pressure on the rudder turned the boat's prow towards Landskrona, which appeared in the north.

"Saved!" cried the steersman and lit a cigar.

At the same instant a little steamer put out from Hven and made straight for the sailing-boat.

"What is that steamer?" she asked.

"It is a custom-house boat," answered the baron who was at home on the sea.

But now the steamer hoisted a yellow flag and whistled.

"That has nothing to do with us," said the baron, and kept on his course.

But the steamer took a sweep round, signalled with the flag, and let off several short, sharp whistles like cries of distress, increasing speed at the same time. Then the baron jumped up wildly at the stern as though he intended plunging into the sea. He remembered the outbreak of cholera at Hamburg and cried: "It is the quarantine! Three days! We are lost!"

The next moment he sat down again in his place, hauling taut the main-sheet and drifting before the wind, straight towards the Sound. The chase began, but soon the steamer stood athwart the bow of the sailing-boat, which was captured.

The whole carefully-thought-out device of the baron to avoid the gaze of curious eyes was defeated, and as their sailing-boat was towed into the harbour of Hven, the unhappy pair were saluted from the bridge by hundreds of their fellow-countrymen with derisive applause and peals of laughter, though the latter did not know whom they were applauding. But the chagrin of the captured pair was greater than the others guessed, for they believed that people were ridiculing their unfortunate love affair.

To make matters worse the baron had unpardonably insulted the quarantine doctor by upbraiding him on board the steamer. Therefore no special consideration was shown them, but they were treated like all others who come from a cholera-infected port. Since their incognito was bound to be seen through sooner or later, they went about in perpetual fear of discovery. Full of suspicion, they believed every other hour that they were recognised.

No one would have the patience to read the story of the torture of those three days. So much is known, that the first day she spent in weeping for her child, while he walked about the island. The second day she enlarged upon the excellent qualities of her husband as contrasted with the execrable ones of her lover. On the third day she cursed him for having taken her away, and when she ended by calling him an idiot for not having obeyed her own and the boat-owner's advice to avoid Hven, he gave her a box on the ear.... On the fourth day when they were really discovered, and newspapers arrived with the whole story, they went into a crevice in the rocks to hide their shame.

When at last two steamers came to fetch the unfortunates, each went on board a different one. And after that day they never saw nor knew each other again.

It was nearly midnight when the reading was ended. An interval of silence followed, but the postmaster felt he must say something. "One generally says 'thanks'!" he remarked. "Meanwhile, after you have said all, there is not much to add: I will only ask myself, you, and everyone a general question: 'What is love?'"

"What is love? Answer: 'I don't know.' Love has been called a piece of roguery on the part of Nature. I don't believe that, for I know that Nature has neither made itself nor can it think out pieces of roguery. But if we accept that proposition, we descend to zoology, and that I do not wish to do. I do not share the theoretical veneration for woman which my contemporaries cherish; on the other hand, I instinctively place her higher than ourselves. She seems to me to be formed out of finer material than we men, but I may be wrong, for she seems to be furnished with more animal functions than we are. If I were a theosophist, I should believe she was only a kind of intermediary chrysalis stage on the way to man, only a temporary manifestation, out of which love, i.e. man's love, creates in, her possibilities of being and seeming. When he finds this really lifeless form of existence and breathes his immortal breath into it, he shares the Creator's joy on the seventh day. The process of refining, which his coarser substance hindered him bringing about in his own soul, he brings about in hers, and through reaction—no! it is too difficult for me to explain; it is like dividing an angle into three equal parts. Anyhow, the fact is certain, and my story is an illustration of it, that when a man is deceived in his love as he always is, his whole being revolts against the government of the world, which seems to him to have condescended to mock at his holiest possession, the holiest thing in all creation. If Providence is consonant with such deceit and such coarse jesting then he discovers a devil where he thought he had seen a good angel. After that what shall he trust, what shall he value, at what shall he not make a grimace? And when after marriage the veil falls, and like Adam and Eve they are naked and ashamed, then even the most unbelieving is conscious of something resembling the Fall. Then comes a fresh error and they think they have deceived each other, which they have not done. So they scourge each other for crimes which neither has committed. A second deception follows the first."

They were again silent. Then the postmaster gave the conversation another turn and descended to the earth. "You can guess that I, at any rate, recognise the lady of your story. She lives in her own little house, here on the island by the shore."

"Yes she does! I know her, and I was quarantine doctor at Hven when she was captured. Now that she is elderly she has renewed her acquaintance with me, and it is from her own mouth that I heard the story. She has been in love countless times, and declares that every time she believed she had found the right man who had been predestined for her from the foundation of the world."

"Does not reason feel its helplessness before such riddles, riddles of every day?"

"Yes and therefore ... yes, next Saturday you shall hear another story, and I think we shall approach the riddle a little more closely, i.e. we shall find its insolubility more strongly proved."

"I shall be glad to hear it. But why don't you have your stories printed?"

"Because I have been a doctor, and a woman's doctor. I have no right to reveal what I have heard in my official capacity. Sometimes I should like to be a writer with a prescriptive right to find material for his art in men's lives and destinies; but that is a calling and a task which is denied to me."

"Very well; good night till next Saturday."

When Saturday evening came round, the two old men sat in the corner room with their toddy and tobacco and a large pile of manuscript on the table. The postmaster looked a little nervously at it, as a child might at a family book of sermons.

"We can give two evenings to it," said the doctor soothingly.