Modin as a matter of fact was much disinclined but did not see how he could refuse. Axelson lived a little way out of the town. They passed through an avenue of lindens. The doctor from time to time ogled his friend sidewise. Modin walked slowly and often looked about him. He seemed irresolute. They passed a bridge and the high red gable of a mill. They branched off on a somewhat narrower by-road by the side of the pond. They rounded a hillside with oaks and soon stood before a fruit orchard, behind which rose a white-plastered two-story house. Axelson hastened to open a gate at the gable end. “Be so good as to come in, my dear brother.” Modin hesitated, paled and grew faint, but Axelson took him by the arm and drew him hastily along. Up on the veranda stood a robust lady of middle age, and on the lawn played several bare-legged boys. Modin just saved himself from falling on the steps. He looked toward the edge of the woods with a helpless glance. But his host introduced him with a grim quiver of the mustache. “Doctor Amadeus Modin--my wife.” With that Axelson’s commanding voice rang out across the lawn, “Come children, aren’t you going to say how-do-you-do to uncle?” The five boys came forward and bowed in turn. It was agony to Modin. He sank down on a sofa and cast an anxious sidelong glance over their close-cropped heads at the lady of the house. She was still dressed in white, and the scar over her eyebrow was still visible. It became her as well as ever, though in a different way. Her figure was full but firm. She had in her something of the matron, in the proud Roman significance of the word. They were a seasoned and vigorous couple, she and her husband. A noticeably stern matrimonial resemblance had arisen between these two persons, whom it never would have occurred to him to associate with each other. Their mouths had the same expression of sharp humor. Two veterans who had fought their battles side by side, they might have been marching along together for many years. All of this passed like lightning through poor Modin’s brain. He no longer believed actually that he knew more about the lady in white than did her husband. Axelson was on the watch when his wife went in to arrange about dinner and pounced on his guest. “Beware of white ladies, dear brother. So far it seems that she doesn’t recognize you. But at dinner I may perhaps make her memory clearer. It’s uncanny when the dead come to life, eh?” And with that if the brutal dog didn’t go on to hum: “Look out, my boy, look out, look out! ’Tis the White Lady beyond a doubt.” He then hurried in for a moment after his wife, presumably to order the wine. But Modin used the moment. He had no wish whatever to be recognized by the bride of his dreams. On the contrary he seized his hat, bounded away over cucumber frames and strawberry patches, and swift as the timid doe threw himself among the sheltering trees of the wood. LEONARD AND THE FISHERMAN