he was unhappy. He licked her hands, looked up
into her face, and whined to be allowed to jump up and comfort her.

She lifted him up and bent over him. Imagining that she meant to play
with him, he began to snap at her hands. She let him have his way, and
the two were soon engaged in a merry, babyish game, which lasted a long
time, because John refused to be satisfied; every time she stopped, he
began again.

Then she talked to him. "Little black John, you remind me of the
negroes. You remind me that your namesake ransomed negroes from slavery.
You have saved me from being enslaved. But it is a sorry deliverance, I
can tell you, if I am not to have the right to live as well as you.
Don't you think so too?" Then she began to cry again.

In Christiania she drove from one station to the other wearing a thick
veil, the dog beside her on the seat. She saw none of her acquaintances.
If they knew----!

Oh, that condemned and executed crow, which Joergen wanted to pick up
and she fled from--she had no idea how well she had seen it, seen the
torn neck, the hacked body, the empty eye-sockets! The red wounds gaped
at her; she could not get them out of her thoughts during this terrible
drive.

It was winter now. She had not seen winter for many years. Dying,
withered vegetation she had seen, but not winter's transforming power,
not desolation decked in the fairest, purest white, with capricious
variations where the landscape was wooded. The fjord was not yet
ice-covered; steel-grey, defiant, hard, the sea came rolling up from
every direction, like a hydra-headed monster challenging to combat.

Her imagination had been excited by the drive through the town; now the
powers of nature took possession of it. All the more intensely did she
feel her impotence. Could _she_ accept any challenge to combat? Would
_she_ ever know the period of transformation? For her there was no
course open but to die.

Whilst she was wrestling with these thoughts she suddenly saw her
father's face. How could she live without telling him what was
impending? And never, never would she be able to tell him! She could not
even let him know that she had broken off her engagement. This alone
would be more than he could bear.

What if, instead of speaking, she were to disappear? Good God! that
would kill him at once.

During the rest of the journey she felt no more fear of others, none
whatever for herself--it was all for him, for him alone!

She arriv