And before she goes to sleep, she lies and thinks out everything she would have said to defend Maurits. Then she falls asleep and starts up again, and in her ears rings an old saying:— “A dog stood on a mountain-top, He barked aloud and would not stop. His name was you, His name was I, His name was all in Earth and Sky. What was his name? His name was why.” The saying had irritated her many a time. Oh, how stupid she had thought the dog was! But now half asleep, she confuses the dog “What” with Maurits and she thinks that the dog has his white forehead. Then she laughs. She laughs as easily as she cries. She has inherited that from her father. II How has “it” come? That which she dares not call by name? “It” has come like the dew to the grass, like the color to the rose, like the sweetness to the berry, imperceptibly and gently without announcing itself beforehand. It is also no matter how “it” came or what “it” is. Were it good or evil, fair or foul, still it is forbidden; that which never ought to exist. “It” makes her anxious, sinful, unhappy. “It” is that of which she never wishes to think. “It” is what shall be torn away and thrown out; and yet it is nothing that can be seized and caught. She shuts her heart to “it,” but it comes in just the same. “It” turns back the blood in her veins and flows there, drives the thoughts from her brain and reigns there, dances through her nerves and trembles in her finger-tips. It is everywhere in her, so that if she had been able to take away everything else of which her body consisted and to have left “it” behind, there would remain a complete impression of her. And yet “it” was nothing. She wishes never to think of “it,” and yet she has to think of “it” constantly. How has she become so wicked? And then she searches and wonders how “it” came. Ah Downie! How tender are our souls, and how easily awakened are our hearts! She was sure that “it” had not come at breakfast, surely not at breakfast. Then she had only been frightened and shy. She had been so terrified when she came down to breakfast and found no Maurits, only Uncle Theodore and the old lady. It had been a clever idea of Maurits to go hunting; although it was impossible to discover what he was hunting in midsummer, as the old lady remarked. But he knew of course that it was wise to keep away from his uncle for a few hours until the latter became calm again. He could not know that she was so shy, nor that she had almost fainted when she had found him gone and herself left alone with uncle and the old lady. Maurits had never been shy. He did not know what torture it is.