While she writes she hears hoof-beats on the road.
“My dear Sir Sunshine,” she thinks, “it is the last time.”
Baron Adrian immediately after comes into her room.
“What, Adrian, are you coming in here?” and she looks dismayed at all her packing.
He is shy and embarrassed and stammers out an excuse.
“I was just writing to you,” she says. “Look, you might as well read it now.”
He takes the letter and she sits and watches him while he reads. She longs to see his face light up with joy.
But he has not read far before he grows fiery red, throws the letter on the floor, stamps on it, and swears terrible oaths.
Marianne trembles slightly. She is no novice in the study of love; still she has not before understood this inexperienced boy, this great child.
“Adrian, dear Adrian,” she says, “what kind of a comedy have you played with me? Come and tell me the truth.”
He came and almost suffocated her with caresses. Poor boy, so he had cared and longed.
After a while she looked out. There walked Madame Gustava and talked with her husband of flowers and birds, and here she sat and chatted of love. “Life has let us both feel its serious side,” she thought, and smiled sadly. “It wants to comfort us; we have each got her big child to play with.”
However, it was good to be loved. It was sweet to hear him whisper of the magical power which she possessed, of how he had been ashamed of what he had said at their first conversation. He had not then known what charm she had. Oh, no man could be near her without loving her, but she had frightened him; he had felt so strangely subdued.
It was not happiness, nor unhappiness, but she would try to live with this man.
She began to understand herself, and thought of the words of the old songs about the turtle-dove. It never drinks clear water, but first muddies it with its foot so that it may better suit its sorrowful spirit. So too should she never go to the spring of life and drink pure, unmixed happiness. Troubled with sorrow, life pleased her best.
My pale friend, Death the deliverer, came in August, when the nights were white with moonlight, to the house of Captain Uggla. But he did not dare to go direct into that hospitable home, for they are few who love him, and he does not wish to be greeted with weeping, rather with quiet joy,—he who comes to set free the soul from the fetters of pain, he who delivers the soul from the burden of the body and lets it enjoy the beautiful life of the spheres.