She understood directly that this was the choice between him and everything else--there was no time to reflect. And that was how he gained the day. At first she stood there in speechless helplessness; then she crept close up to him and stayed there. He kissed her "welcome;" they held each other in a close embrace and wept. The servant saw someone coming outside the windows and drew down the blinds, so there was only a dim light in the room; and they, too, heard Marie crying in the next room. Their embrace gradually became a whispered conversation, at first interrupted, but then accompanied by subdued sobbing, which was checked and began again, like music with sourdine. There were whispers of the day when he would journey after her, never again to part from her; and whispers of how true a friend he would be to her; that their future was worthy of sacrifice now; that both his and her letters should be like diaries--short, hurried words of endless love, all from him; hers was the weeping, sourdine-like. Although this was the hour of departure, this hour they spent together now, it was the first time that they had so completely and undisturbedly shown their devotion for each other. The novelty of it shone in upon their grief till there seemed to be a sunny haze around them. Soon her hushed sobbing became a whisper; the first time she spoke he wanted to look at her, but she would not allow it. If he would sit quite still and not look at her, then she would tell him something. He was the white pasha! She would not tell him what she meant by it, it would take too long; but she had been waiting for the white pasha from the time she was a child; that is to say, since her father died; she was then twelve years old. She had suffered much, most of all when she came home from Berlin and had not sufficient courage to play in public; but neither would she tell him about that; it would take too long. Always she had dreamt of this white pasha; ah, if he would but come! She was quite confident that he would come. Even when she went down to the "whales," she knew he would follow her; he would find the way. Once she had thought that Rendalen was the white pasha; but, as it turned out, he was not; he had moved away to make room for the real one to come. The first evening they two had met in the silent falling snow. Why should they have met there? She had looked at him then and thought, wonderingly: Is he the white pasha? The next time they met he had carried little Juanita, and then she felt almost certain that none other would have thought of that. But then everything seemed to have come so rapidly, and it was all so different from what she had imagined. He asked in a whisper if she would tell him what had made her go down to the "whales" a year ago; she shuddered when he asked her. And even after her marriage, did she still expect the white pasha to come? More eagerly than ever. Had she not known then what marriage was? She pressed closer to him and was silent.