py she would
be if she could but see him, and how all day long she had to go about
alone, and it was so dull and solitary. "Oh!" cried the mother, in
horror, "you are very likely sleeping with a troll! But I will teach you
a way to see him. You shall have a bit of one of my candles, which you
can take away with you hidden in your breast. Look at him with that when
he is asleep, but take care not to let any tallow drop upon him."

So she took the candle, and hid it in her breast, and when evening drew
near the White Bear came to fetch her away. When they had gone some
distance on their way, the White Bear asked her if everything had not
happened just as he had foretold, and she could not but own that it had.
"Then, if you have done what your mother wished," said he, "you have
brought great misery on both of us." "No," she said, "I have not done
anything at all." So when she had reached home and had gone to bed it
was just the same as it had been before, and a man came and lay down
beside her, and late at night, when she could hear that he was sleeping,
she got up and kindled a light, lit her candle, let her light shine on
him, and saw him, and he was the handsomest prince that eyes had ever
beheld, and she loved him so much that it seemed to her that she must
die if she did not kiss him that very moment. So she did kiss him; but
while she was doing it she let three drops of hot tallow fall upon
his shirt, and he awoke. "What have you done now?" said he; "you have
brought misery on both of us. If you had but held out for the space of
one year I should have been free. I have a step-mother who has bewitched
me so that I am a white bear by day and a man by night; but now all is
at an end between you and me, and I must leave you, and go to her. She
lives in a castle which lies east of the sun and west of the moon, and
there too is a princess with a nose which is three ells long, and she
now is the one whom I must marry."

She wept and lamented, but all in vain, for go he must. Then she asked
him if she could not go with him. But no, that could not be. "Can you
tell me the way then, and I will seek you--that I may surely be allowed
to do!"

"Yes, you may do that," said he; "but there is no way thither. It lies
east of the sun and west of the moon, and never would you find your way
there."

When she awoke in the morning both the Prince and the castle were gone,
and she was lying on a small green patch in the midst of a dark