From the very first she had felt compassion for this peculiar man; but she froze to an icicle in his society, and in the vicinity of his breath. Therefore, she herself thought that it was horribly cowardly of her to go on with it without a complaint; it was certainly not out of compassion. Punctual to the minute he appeared, in his long brown coat with the tight sleeves, and with a working-man's unbearable smell of stale perspiration from clothes and body. His breath reached right across the table; she felt it too, even if it did not really reach her. He pulled forward his chair, sat down, and opened his book, and when he had found his place, he sent his cold, horrible eyes across to her warm, startled, dove-like ones, startled beyond bounds. His long, black-smudged fingers, covered with black hair like his whole hand, took hold, the one hand of the book, the fingers of the other he used to point with; then he cleared his throat well, and finally began. Usually he asked about something from the last lesson; always intelligent, suspecting a mistake on her part, a want of perception or logic. He made her feel unsafe under the safest circumstances. When he slowly, and with much deliberation, struggled on, word for word, and she presumed to interrupt him because he had made a mistake, he put down his finger still firmer to mark the place where he had been caught tripping, and looked up at her, vexed and suspicious. Then she in a most uncertain way reiterated her correction; but never could she succeed in making it clear enough to him; he had always to ask for further explanations. She repeated it a third time, and at last he was gracious enough to let it pass--to her account. Each time she interrupted him, she knew what would follow--and knew that wave upon wave of that bad breath would be wafted across to her. What a piece of work it was for this man to come to her as sure as he always was; never repeating a mistake that once had been corrected; and what capacity he had, enabling him to ask all those extraordinary questions, which sometimes would have done honour to a philologist--all this she neither overlooked nor undervalued. But to her he was so truly fearful. He was too painfully like an old monkey she had seen sedately eating with a silver spoon. This picture hanging grinning over him was like revenge. There was one circumstance in her daily life which made it very pleasant, it was her work together with the servant; they became very good friends. Both of them got on so well together--Ragni found out what there was to do, and the other one did it. Ragni liked work and was quick about it, the servant was intelligent and anxious to learn; they took a pleasure in each other's society. A fortnight after the unsuccessful attempt at duet-playing, she said to Karl Meek: "What do you think about it? Shall we try once more?" "No, thank you, it--it won't do!" answered he, horrified.