venting
new pet-names for you all the time, so that no one should have as pretty
a name as you, so that you should have a prettier name to-day than you
had yesterday. You pretend not to hear them. I have shown you every
tenderness, but by your pretence you keep it at sword's length from
you. You have been torturing me in this way now for three days.... Look
kindly at you! Why, every time I look at you, you see my eyes shine
through a tear-filled dimness...

KRISTRUN. Have you seen it in the glass?

INGOLF [keeps silent for a while, bites his lips, turns away from her].
Some women should not be allowed to be pretty.

KRISTRUN [laughs, dangling her foot]. Quite right. But men in turn,
ought to be obliged to be handsome--otherwise they are disgusting.

INGOLF. Kristrun! Is it quite impossible to talk seriously with you? Is
there nothing so sacred to you that you wouldn't ridicule it?

KRISTRUN. Well--?

INGOLF. No, I suppose there is not.

KRISTRUN.... Perhaps more than you think.

INGOLF. Why do you let me suffer, then? Haven't I confessed my love to
you?

KRISTRUN. No, you haven't.

INGOLF [sits down at her side. While he speaks she sits erect in the
chair, her hands folded in her lap, her head raised. A bright smile
plays on her half-open lips. It is as if she were listening to a
beautiful tale]. Are you waiting for me to say just the words: I love
you! Weren't there moments when I made a greater confession, when
one sigh, one glance, told you more than these words? But you are not
satisfied with hearing a love like the fluttering of wings in the dead
of night, you want to hear it sound like a clarion call in your ears: I
love you, I love you! ... To-day I saw you standing at the piano, there;
each feature in your face was in repose, each move blended softly into
fine lines. I saw you as one of those works of art of an ancient master,
which could lure the infidel to believe in the resurrection of the body.
What was my surprise, when I saw you move, and walk across the floor!...
Even your dress, altering its folds with the rhythm of your step,
becomes mysterious, like the sea--floating, as it were, with life
itself.... Only that fleeting sparkle from your eyes as you roll them
upward... Or when you are lying down, and you stretch your foot out--so
supple, that the tension on your arch makes your instep seem higher...
And then your everlasting vivacity: when you laugh, the air seems to
float with tiny fairies