"Why don't you ask me to go back a little way with you?" she asks, in a low voice, looking down at the toe of her shoe. "Great Heavens!" I reply, beside myself, "Great Heavens, if you only would!" "Yes; but only a little way." And we turned round. I was fearfully confused. I absolutely did not know if I were on my head or my heels. This creature upset all my chain of reasoning; turned it topsy-turvy. I was bewitched and extraordinarily happy. It seemed to me as if I were being dragged enchantingly to destruction. She had expressly willed to go back; it wasn't my notion, it was her own desire. I walk on and look at her, and get more and more bold. She encourages me, draws me to her by each word she speaks. I forget for a moment my poverty, my humble position, my whole miserable condition. I feel my blood course madly through my whole body, as in the days before I caved in, and resolved to feel my way by a little ruse. "By-the-way, it wasn't you I followed that time," said I. "It was your sister." "Was it my sister?" she questions, in the highest degree amazed. She stands still, looks up at me, and positively waits for an answer. She puts the question in all sober earnest. "Yes," I replied. "Hum--m, that is to say, it was the younger of the two ladies who went on in front of me." "The youngest, eh? eh? a-a-ha!" she laughed out all at once, loudly, heartily, like a child. "Oh, how sly you are; you only said that just to get me to raise my veil, didn't you? Ah, I thought so; but you may just wait till you are blue first ... just for punishment." We began to laugh and jest; we talked incessantly all the time. I do not know what I said, I was so happy. She told me that she had seen me once before, a long time ago, in the theatre. I had then comrades with me, and I behaved like a madman; I must certainly have been tipsy that time too, more's the shame. Why did she think that? Oh, I had laughed so. "Really, a-ah yes; I used to laugh a lot in those days." "But now not any more?" "Oh yes; now too. It is a splendid thing to exist sometimes." We reached Carl Johann. She said: "Now we won't go any farther," and we returned through University Street. When we arrived at the fountain once more I slackened my pace a little; I knew that I could not go any farther with her. "Well, now you must turn back here," she said, and stopped. "Yes, I suppose I must." But a second after she thought I might as well go as far as the door with her. Gracious me, there couldn't be anything wrong in that, could there? "No," I replied. But when we were standing at the door all my misery confronted me clearly. How was one to keep up one's courage when one was so broken down? Here I stood before a young lady, dirty, ragged, torn, disfigured by hunger, unwashed, and only half-clad; it was enough to make one sink into the earth. I shrank into myself, bent my head involuntarily, and said: "May I not meet you any more then?"