ave nothing to do
with people, but warnings and spirits are in the gospel, too. What do
you say?"

"I, oh, I don't know--what do you really mean?"

"You surely don't love nature?"

"But, quite the contrary."

"I don't mean nature, as you see it from benches placed where there is
a fine view on hills up which they have built steps; where it is like a
set scene, but nature every day, always."

"Just so! I can take joy in every leaf, every twig, every beam of light,
every shadow. There isn't a hill so barren, nor a turf-pit so square,
nor a road so monotonous, that I cannot for a moment fall in love with
it."

"But what joy can you take in a tree or a bush, if you don't imagine
that a living being dwells within it, that opens and closes the flowers
and smooths the leaves? When you see a lake, a deep, clear lake, don't
you love it for this reason, that you imagine creatures living deep,
deep down below, that have their own joys and sorrows, that have their
own strange life with strange yearnings? And what, for instance, is
there beautiful about the green hill of Berdbjerg, if you don't imagine,
that inside very tiny creatures swarm and buzz, and sigh when the sun
rises, but begin to dance and play with their beautiful treasure-troves,
as soon as evening comes."

"How wonderfully beautiful that is! And you see that?"

"But you?"

"Yes, I can't explain it, but there is something in the color, in the
movements, and in the shapes, and then in the life which lives in them;
in the sap which rises in trees and flowers, in the sun and rain that
make them grow, in the sand which blows together in hills, and in the
showers of rain that furrow and fissure the hillsides. Oh, I cannot
understand this at all, when I am to explain it."

"And that is enough for you?"

"Oh, more than enough sometimes--much too much! And when shape and color
and movement are so lovely and so fleeting and a strange world lies
behind all this and lives and rejoices and desires and can express all
this in voice and song, then you feel so lonely, that you cannot come
closer to this world, and life grows lusterless and burdensome."

"No, no, you must not think of your fiancee in that way."

"Oh, I am not thinking of her."

William and his sister came up to them, and together they went into the
house.

*****

On a morning several days later Mogens and Thora were walking in the
garden. He was to look at the grape-vine nursery, where he had not