"You did not appear last night; not given in already, I hope!" She is kneeling on one knee before the fire, holding her palms to the glow; and with her figure hidden in her loose, fur-lined coat, and the light showing up her strong face under the little tweed cap, she seems so like a clever-faced slight man that I feel I am conventionally guilty in talking so freely to her. She looks at me with a deliberate, critical air, and then springs up. "Let me give you something for your head! Stewardess, a wine-glass!" I should not dream of remonstrance, not if she were to command me to drink sea-water; and I am not complaisant as a rule. When she comes back I swallow it bravely, but I leave some powder in the glass; she shakes her head, and I finish this too. We sat and talked, or at least she talked and I listened. I don't remember what she said; I only know that she was making clear to me most of the things that had puzzled me for a long time,--questions that arise in silent hours, that one speculates over, and to which one finds no answer in text-books. How she knew just the subjects that worked in me I knew not; some subtile intuitive sympathy, I suppose, enabled her to find it out. It was the same at breakfast; she talked down to the level of the men present (of course they did not see that it might be possible for a woman to do that), and made it a very pleasant meal. It was in the evening--we had the saloon to ourselves--when she told me about the white elf. I had been talking of myself and of Hans Jörgen. "I like your Mr. Hans Jörgen," she said; "he has a strong nature and knows what he wants; there is reliability in him. They are rarer qualities than one thinks in men; I have found through life that the average man is weaker than we are. It must be a good thing to have a stronger nature to lean to. I have never had that." There is a want in the tone of her voice as she ends, and I feel inclined to put out my hand and stroke hers,--she has beautiful long hands,--but I am afraid to do so. I query shyly,-- "Have you no little ones?" "Children, you mean? No, I am one of the barren ones; they are less rare than they used to be. But I have a white elf at home, and that makes up for it. Shall I tell you how the elf came? Well, its mother is a connection of mine, and she hates me with an honest hatred; it is the only honest feeling I ever discovered in her. It was about the time that she found the elf was to come that it broke out openly, but that was mere coincidence. How she detested me! Those narrow, poor natures are capable of an intensity of feeling concentrated on one object that larger natures can scarcely measure.