What worse things might still happen? I resolved to keep calm, whatever might come; Heaven is my witness. Was it I who had forced myself on her from the first? No, no; never! I was but standing in her way one week-day as she passed. What a summer it was here in the north! Already the cockchafers had ceased to fly, and people were grown more and more difficult to understand, for all that the sun shone on them day and night. What were their blue eyes looking for, and what were they thinking behind their mysterious lashes? Well, after all, they were all equally indifferent to me. I took out my lines and went fishing for two days, four days; but at night I lay with open eyes in the hut . . .

“Edwarda, I have not seen you for four days.”

“Four days, yes — so it is. Oh, but I have been so busy. Come and look.”

She led me into the big room. The tables had been moved out, the chairs set round the walls, everything shifted; the chandelier, the stove, and the walls were fantastically decorated with heather and black stuff from the store. The piano stood in one corner.

These were her preparations for “the ball.”

“What do you think of it?” she asked.

“Wonderful,” I said.

We went out of the room.

I said: “Listen, Edwarda — have you quite forgotten me?”

“I can’t understand you,” she answered in surprise. “You saw all I had been doing — how could I come and see you at the same time?”

“No,” I agreed; “perhaps you couldn’t.” I was sick and exhausted with want of sleep, my speech grew meaningless and uncontrolled; I had been miserable the whole day. “No, of course you could not come. But I was going to say . . . in a word, something has changed; there is something wrong. Yes. But I cannot read in your face what it is. There is something very strange about your brow, Edwarda. Yes, I can see it now.”

“But I have not forgotten you,” she cried, blushing, and slipped her arm suddenly into mine.

“No? Well, perhaps you have not forgotten me. But if so, then I do not know what I am saying. One or the other.”

“You shall have an invitation to-morrow. You must dance with me. Oh, how we will dance!”

“Will you go a little way with me?” I asked.

“Now? No, I can&rsq............