How I repented of it afterward — that business with the gun. It was a mad thing to do. It was not worth while any way, and it served no purpose, only kept me tied down to the hut for weeks. I remember distinctly even now all the discomfort and annoyance it caused; my washerwoman had to come every day and stay there nearly all the time, making purchases of food, looking after my housekeeping, for several weeks. Well, and then . . .

One day the Doctor began talking about Edwarda. I heard her name, heard what she had said and done, and it was no longer of any great importance to me; it was as if he spoke of some distant, irrelevant thing. So quickly one can forget, I thought to myself, and wondered at it.

“Well, and what do you think of Edwarda yourself, since you ask? I have not thought of her for weeks, to tell the truth. Wait a bit — it seems to me there must have been something between you and her, you were so often together. You acted host one day at a picnic on the island, and she was hostess. Don’t deny it, Doctor, there was something — a sort of understanding. No, for Heaven’s sake don’t answer me. You owe me no explanation, I am not asking to be told anything at all — let us talk of something else if you like. How long before I can get about again?”

I sat there thinking of what I had said. Why was I inwardly afraid lest the Doctor should speak out? What was Edwarda to me? I had forgotten her.

And later the talk turned on her again, and I interrupted him once more — God knows what it was I dreaded to hear.

“What do you break off like that for?” he asked. “Is it that you can’t bear to hear me speak her name?”

“Tell me,” I said, “what is your honest opinion of Edwarda? I should be interested to know.”

He looked at me suspiciously.

“My honest opinion?”

“Perhaps you may have something new to tell me to-day. Perhaps you have proposed, and been accepted. May I congratulate you? No? Ah, the devil trust you — haha!”

“So that was what you were afraid of?”

“Afraid of? My dear Doctor!”

Pause.

“No,” he said, “I have not proposed and been accepted. But you have, perhaps. There’s no proposing to Edwarda — she will take whomever she has a fancy for. Did you take her for a peasant girl? You have met her, and seen for yourself. She is a child that’s had too little whipping in her time, and a woman of many moods. Cold? No fear of that! Warm? Ice, I say. What is she, then? A slip of a girl, sixteen or seventeen — exactly. But try to make an impression on that slip of a girl, and she will laugh you to scorn for your trouble. Even her father can do nothing with her; she obeys him outwardly, but, in point of fact, ’tis she herself that rules. She says you have eyes like an animal . . . ”

“You’re wrong there — it was someone else said I had eyes like an animal.”

“Someone else? Who?”

“I don’t know. One of her girl friends. No, it was not Edwarda said that. Wait a bit though; perhaps, after all, it was Edwarda . . . ”

“When you look at her, it makes her feel so and so, she says. But do you think that brings you a hairbreadth nearer? Hardly. Look at her, use your eyes as much as you please — but as soon as she marks what you are doing, she will say to herself —‘Ho, here’s this man looking at me with his eyes, and thinks to win me that way.’ And with a single glance, or a word, she’ll have you ten leagues away. Do you think I don’t know her? How old do you reckon her to be?” “She was born in ‘38, she said.”

“A lie. I looked it up, out of curiosity. She’s twenty, though she might well pass for fifteen. She is not happy; there’s a deal of conflict in that little head of hers. When she stands looking out at the hills and the sea, and her mouth gives that little twitch, that little spasm of pain, then she is suffering; but she is too proud, too obstinate for tears. She is more than a bit romantic; a powerful imagination; she is waiting for a prince. What was that about a certain five-daler note you were supposed to have given someone?”

“A jest. It was nothing . . . ”

“It was something all the same. She did something of the same sort with me once. It’s a year ago now. We were on board the mail-packet while it was lying here in the harbour. It was raining, and very ............