"Why, of course it didn't--or we shouldn't be sitting here now, should we? But Egholm, he was as sure as could be it was going to happen, on the thirteenth of November, and when it was only the eighth, he came and told me to make up a bed for one of us on the floor. We'd always been used to sleep together in one bed."
"But what did he want to change for?" asked Madam Hermansen, with increasing interest.
"Why," explained Fru Egholm eagerly, "you see--he confessed himself why it was; he was wonderfully gentle those days. He wouldn't have us sleeping together--not because of anything indecent or that sort, but because it says in the Bible that on the Day of Judgment there may be two people sleeping in the same bed, 'and the one shall be taken and the other left.'"
"So, you see. Madam Hermansen, I soon reckoned out what he thought, how I might get to heaven after all."
"And he's never been in love with anybody--_outside_, I mean?"
"There's one he's in love with," laughed Fru Egholm--"more than anything else in the world. And that's--himself! No, thank goodness he's never had time for that sort of thing, being too busy with his steam-engine inventions. Now I think of it, though, there was a girl once, when he was quite young, over in Helsingør. Clara Steen was her name. You'll have heard of Consul Steen, no doubt; he's ever so rich. His daughter, it was. And she ran after him to such a degree.... Why, he used to write verses to her. Though I don't count that anything very much against him, for he's written poetry to me, too, in the days when we were engaged."
She thrust a practised hand into her workbox, and fished up a yellowed scrap of paper, and read:
"'Helsingør by waters bright Like a Venice to the sight, All the world thy fame doth know. Beeches fair around thee grow, And the fortress with its crown Looks majestically down,...'"
Fru Hermansen relapsed into an envious silence, absently investigating her nostrils with one finger. Fru Egholm took out some new hair, and compared the colour with that she was using.
"Think that will do?" she asked ingratiatingly.
"Well, it ought to. It's a deal prettier than the other."
"But it oughtn't to be! You're supposed to have all the same coloured hair in one plait."