He took a few steps but halted again suddenly amongst the sunny patches on the hard dry road. The thought that she, Elvira Lähnfeldt, was now riding by Manne’s side irritated him like a noxious poison. He saw her suddenly in the light of anxious and trembling hope. He saw her as she had sat in the sunshine, light, straight, elegant on her nervous jet black horse. Her assurance and her recklessness were thorns in his side. For a moment he found her really beautiful and desirable in her cool refinement. The brittle, overstrung elements in her character seemed to him to be in wonderful harmony with the beautiful autumn day. Fancy if he might lead a calm and exquisite life together with this child of luxury and taste with her the joys of a satisfied ambition! Even the thought of her secret infirmity seemed to him at this moment an additional refinement, a promise of a painless, concentrated life of pleasure.
Stellan pulled himself up as if at a word of command. “Damn it, I am not falling in love, I hope,” he thought. But the next moment his thought was: “No, dash it all, the fact is I have not slept for several nights!” He struck his leg with his stick: “Keep cool! If you get sentimental, all is lost. She is nothing but a whimsical and obstinate child and you must conquer her through her whims and her obstinacy.”
For a moment Stellan felt his head swim and the ground give way under his feet. This made him doubly reckless. Partly from a kind of cruel sensuousness and partly to give himself courage, he began in imagination to undress her and lay bare her infirmity. “It is not the softest women who are the weakest,” he thought. “With all her arrogance and all her sport she is really a poor, delicate, and enfeebled creature. She is suffering from the disease of wealth, the sapping of strength of those who do not need to do anything for their living. And she can’t have children. The future is cut out of her body. Whence can she derive any strong instincts difficult to conquer? No, she is really a very easy victim to one who is wise and reckless....”
Stellan already smiled to himself. “No, my dear Manne, you are too good natured,” he thought. “Even from behind one can see when you are lying....”