"Oh, don't go--wait a moment. It's such ages since I've--Furnishing it how? What ought I--?" "Read, read, read--everything you can lay your hands on." "But there _isn't_ anything to lay hands on." "My dear lady, haven't you postcards? Write to London and order the reviews to be sent out to you. Get some notion of people and ideas. Good-bye." "Oh--but won't you really come and look at Kökensee?" "It's a dark place. I'm afraid what I'd see there would be nothing." "There'll be more light to-morrow--" "I'm going south again to-morrow with Glambeck. I only came for a day. I was curious about provincial German interiors. Good-bye." "Oh, but do--" "My advice is very sound, you know. One can't shut one's eyes and just sleep while the procession of men and women who are making the world goes past one, unless"--his eyes glanced over the want of trimness of her figure, the untidy way her loose coat was fastened--"unless one doesn't mind running to seed." "But I _do_ mind," cried Ingeborg. "It's the last thing I want to run to--" "Then don't. Good-bye." He took off his hat and was already several steps away from her by the time it was on his head again. Then he turned round and called out to the dejected little figure standing where he had left it in the sandy road with the grey curtain of mist blurring it: "It really is _everybody's_ duty to know at least something of what's being done in the world." And he jerked away into the dusk towards Glambeck. She stood a long while looking at the place where the gloom had blotted him out. Wonderful to have met somebody who really talked to one, who actually told one what to do. She went home making impulsive resolutions, suddenly brave again, her chin in the air. Ill or not ill she was not going to be beaten, she was not going to wait another day before beginning to fill her stupid mind. It was monstrous she should be so ignorant, so uneducated. What was she made of, then, what poor cheap stuff, that she could think of nothing better than to cry because she did not feel as well as she used to? Weren't there heaps of things to do even when one was ill? Had she not herself heard of sick people whose minds triumphed so entirely over their prostrate flesh that from really quite perpetual beds they shed brightness on whole parishes?