Eli listened attentively, and stood silent long after he had finished. At last she exclaimed, "Ah, what a pity for her!" "I feel as if I had not made that song myself," he said; and then stood like her, thinking over it. "But that won't be my fate, I hope," she said, after a pause. "No; I was thinking rather of myself." "Will it be your fate, then?" "I don't know; I felt so then." "How strange." She wrote on the panes again. The next day, when Arne came into the room to dinner, he went over to the window. Outdoors it was dull and foggy, but indoors, warm and comfortable; and on the window-pane was written with a finger, "Arne, Arne, Arne," and nothing but "Arne," over and over again: it was at that window, Eli stood the evening before. XI. ELI'S SICKNESS. Next day, Arne came into the room and said he had heard in the yard that the clergyman's daughter, Mathilde, had just gone to the town; as she thought, for a few days, but as her parents intended, for a year or two. Eli had heard nothing of this before, and now she fell down fainting. Arne had never seen any one faint, and he was much frightened. He ran for the maids; they ran for the parents, who came hurrying in; and there was a disturbance all over the house, and the dog barked on the barn steps. Soon after, when Arne came in again, the mother was kneeling at the bedside, while the father supported Eli's drooping head. The maids were running about--one for water, another for hartshorn which was in the cupboard, while a third unfastened her jacket. "God help you!" the mother said; "I see it was wrong in us not to tell her; it was you, Baard, who would have it so; God help you!" Baard did not answer. "I wished to tell her, indeed; but nothing's to be as I wish; God help you! You're always so harsh with her, Baard; you don't understand her; you don't know what it is to love anybody, you don't." Baard did not answer. "She isn't like some others who can bear sorrow; it quite puts her down, poor slight thing, as she is. Wake up, my child, and we'll be kind to you! wake up, Eli, my own darling, and don't grieve us so." "You always either talk too much or too little," Baard said, at last, looking over to Arne, as though he did not wish him to hear such things, but to leave the room. As, however, the maid-servants stayed, Arne thought he, too, might stay; but he went over to the window. Soon the sick girl revived so far as to be able to look round and recognize those about her; but then also memory returned, and she called wildly for Mathilde, went into hysterics, and sobbed till it was painful to be in the room. The mother tried to soothe her, and the father sat down where she could see him; but she pushed them both from her. "Go away!" she cried; "I don't like you; go away!" "Oh, Eli, how can you say you don't like your own parents?" exclaimed the mother. "No! you're unkind to me, and you take away every pleasure from me!"