n't even believe it yourself. It is not
because you think such a terrible lot of me, that you are distressed
now. You are only a little bit alarmed because of the change, you are
frightened because of the slight disarrangement of your daily habits.
I am thoroughly familiar with that, you are not the first one I have
gotten tired of."

"Oh, stay with me only to-day, I won't torment you to stay a single hour
longer.

"You really are dogs, you women! You haven't a trace of fine feelings in
your body. If one gives you a kick, you come crawling back again."

"Yes, yes, that's what we do, but stay only for to-day--won't
you--stay!"

"Stay, stay! No!"

"You have never loved me, Mogens!"

"No!"

"Yes, you did; you loved me the day when there was such a violent wind,
oh, that beautiful day down at the sea-shore, when we sat in the shelter
of the boat."

"Stupid girl!"

"If I only were a respectable girl with fine parents, and not such a one
as I am, then you would stay with me; then you would not have the heart
to be so hard--and I, who love you so!"

"Oh, don't bother about that."

"No, I am like the dust beneath your feet, you care no more for me. Not
one kind word, only hard words; contempt, that is good enough for me."

"The others are neither better nor worse than you. Good-by, Laura!"

He held out his hand to her, but she kept hers on her back and wailed:
"No, no, not good-by! not good-by!"

Mogens raised the blind, stepped back a couple of paces and let it
fall down in front of the window. Laura quickly leaned down over the
window-sill beneath it and begged: "Come to me! come and give me your
hand."

"No."

When he had gone a short distance she cried plaintively:

"Good-by, Mogens!"

He turned towards the house with a slight greeting. Then he walked on:
"And a girl like that still believes in love!--no, she does not!"

*****

The evening wind blew from the ocean over the land, the strand-grass
swung its pale spikes to and fro and raised its pointed leaves a little,
the rushes bowed down, the water of the lake was darkened by thousands
of tiny furrows, and the leaves of the water-lilies tugged restlessly at
their stalks. Then the dark tops of the heather began to nod, and on
the fields of sand the sorrel swayed unsteadily to and fro. Towards the
land! The stalks of oats bowed downward, and the young clover trembled
on the stubble-fields, and the wheat rose and fell in heavy billows; the
roofs g