"But it's incredible! It's like death. Why didn't you?" "Because I couldn't." "As though it weren't possible to tear oneself free at least every now and then." "You wait till you're a pastor's wife." "But how do you manage to be so alive? For you shine, you know. When I think of all the things _I've_ done since I was here last--" He broke off, and looked away from her across the lake. "Oh, well. Sickening things, really, most of them," he finished. "Wonderful pictures," said Ingeborg, leaning forward and flushing with her enthusiasm. "That's what you've done." "Yes. One paints and paints. But in between--it's those in between the work-fits that hash one up. What do _you_ do in between?" "In between what?" "Whatever it is you do in the morning and whatever it is you do in the evening." "I enjoy myself." "Yes. Yes. That's what _I'd_ like to do." "But don't you?" "I can't." "What--_you_ can't?" she said. "But you live in beauty. You make it. You pour it over the world--" She stopped abruptly, hit by a sudden thought. "I beg your pardon," she said. "I don't know anything really. Perhaps--you're in mourning?" He looked at her. "No," he said, "I'm not in mourning." "Or perhaps--no, you're not ill. And you can't be poor. Well, then, why in the world don't you enjoy yourself?" "Aren't you ever bored?" he answered. "The days aren't long enough." He looked round at the empty landscape and shuddered. "Here. In Kökensee," he said. "It's spring now. But what about the wet days, the howling days? What about unmanageable months like February? Why"--he turned to her--"you must be a perfect little seething vessel of independent happiness, bubbling over with just your own contentments." "I never was called a seething vessel before," said Ingeborg, hugging her knees, her eyes dancing. "What an impression for a respectable woman to produce!" "What a gift to possess, you mean. The greatest of all. To carry one's happiness about with one." "But that's exactly what _you_ do. Aren't you spilling joy at every step? Splashing it into all the galleries of the world? Leaving beauty behind you wherever you've been?" He twisted himself round to lie at full length and look up at her. "What delightful things you say!" he said. "I wish I could think you mean them." "Mean them?" she exclaimed, flushing again. "Do you suppose I'd waste the precious minutes saying things I don't mean? I haven't talked to any one really for years--not to any one who answered back. And now it's _you_! Why, it's too wonderful! As though I'd waste a second of it." "You're the queerest, most surprising thing to find here on the edge of the world," he said, gazing up at her. "And there's the sun just got at your hair through the trees. Are you always full of molten enthusiasms for people?" "Only for you." "But what am I to say to these repeated pattings?" he cried.