"What was the name of the girl he loved?" she asked.
"Ugh! what a horrible name! Keats and Brawne. Isn't England a funny country? We have beautiful names at home like Norregaard and Friessen and Christinsen and Engel and Röde. You can't say Röde."
"No. Not like that at all. It's right deep in your throat, listen! Röde--Röde, Röde." She stared in front of her. "And on a summer morning the water comes up Holman's Canal and the green tiles shine in the water and the ships clink-clank against the side of the pier. The ships are riding almost into Kongens Nytorv and all along the Square in the early morning sun they are going." She pulled herself up with a little jump.
"All the same, although he was called Keats there are lovely words in what I was reading." She turned to the book again, repeating to herself:
"All my clear-eyed fish, golden or rainbow-sided, My grotto-sands tawny and gold."
She pushed the book away and looked at him.
"Now tell me," he said, "why you're happy to-day?"
She looked around as though some one might be listening, then leant towards him and lowered her voice.
"I've had a letter from my uncle, Uncle Axel. It's written from Constantinople. Luckily I got the letters before mother one morning and found this. He's coming to London as soon as ever he can to see after me. Mother would be terribly angry if she knew. She hates Uncle Axel worst of them all. When he's there I'm safe!"
"I feel such a fool," he said. "Even your mother said the same thing. Here I've been hanging round for months and done nothing for you at all. Any other man would have got you away to Copenhagen or wherever you wanted to go. But I--I always fail. I'm always hopeless--even now when I want to succeed more than ever before in my life."
His voice shook. He turned away from her.
"No," she said. "You've not failed. I couldn't have escaped like that. Mother would only have followed me. Both my uncles are abroad. There's no one in Copenhagen to protect me. I would rather--what do you call it? hang on like this until everything got so bad that I _had_ to run. You've been a wonderful friend to me these months. You don't know what a help you've been to me. I've been the ungrateful one." She looked at him and drew his eyes to hers. "Do you know I've thought a lot about you these last weeks, wondering what I could do in return. It seems unfair. I'd like to love you in the way you want me to. But I can't. . . . I've never loved anybody, not in _that_ way. I loved my father and I love my uncles, but most of all I love places, the places I've always known, Odense and the fields and the long line against the sky just before the sunsets, and Kjöbenhavn when the bells are ringing and you go up Ostngarde and it's so full of people you can't move: in the spring when you walk out to Langlinir and smell the sea and see the ships come in and hear them knocking with hammers on the boats, and it's all so fresh and clean . . . and at twelve o'clock when they change the guard and the soldiers come marching down behind the band into Kongens Nytorv and all the boys shout . . . I don't know," she sighed, staring again in front of her. "It's so simple there and every one's kind-hearted. Here----" She suddenly burst into tears, hiding her face in her arms.