I controlled my embarrassment, and took the seat he offered me. The children had entered into an argument as to the possible value of foreign stamps, and the owner of the room turned to me in conversation. At first he only spoke commonplaces with a faint touch of irony in his voice, but he grew grave and interested after I had made a few remarks. Then we began a discussion, but how we started upon it I could never remember. Smoking a cigar and leaning back in his chair with easy elegance, he asked: "Intoxication or regret--which is the greater of the two?... Is it worth the while?..." I understood only half of what he meant, and answered that I did not know. Then I told him about my poems, and he listened and smiled, an odd ironical smile that also I could not understand. At last when I departed with the children he asked me what books I was reading. "None at all," I replied, whereupon he looked surprised. "May I get you some from the library?" I thought it was very kind of him, and said that I should be pleased. A few days later the porter handed me a parcel containing books, and a slip of paper. "I have chosen the books in a great hurry," he had written, "but trust that you will like them." As soon as I could find time I opened one of the books. It was a volume of novels by Jacobsen, and one of them was called "Morgan." I read it all through.... A man--a dreamer, who loves madly a girl to-day and has forgotten her by to-morrow; and round that man there moved pictures full of glowing colour and sparkling light. I liked it, but did not really understand it. "Have you read some of the books?" my new friend asked me as soon as we met. "Yes." "That novel too about Morgan?" "Yes." "Did you like it?" "I don't know." "One of the most beautiful passages is that in which he walks through the waving corn-field with his young wife." "Yes, but I believe he must have been a horrible man." "Why that?" "So wilful, so restless, so faithless." He pulled his soft hat over his forehead, gave me a strange look and smiled. We met almost every day, generally in the morning when I took the children to school and he went to his office. We rode a little way together in the tram-car, then I got out with the children and he went on. During these few minutes we carried on jumpy conversations, based upon an incident, an idea, or a poem of mine. We talked on dispassionately as it seemed, until we stopped abruptly as if afraid that we had said too much. By-and-by I began to think of him whether I saw him or not; his face, his figure rose like a blazing question from the midst of the strange, wistful dreams that I had dreamt all my life, and something that had lain within me, dull and senseless like a trance, woke, wondered, and trembled into joy.