But the young people could not tear themselves from the dance. They danced in their out-door wraps, and a mad dance it was. As soon as a girl stopped dancing with one partner, another came and dragged her away with him. And even the sorrowful Gösta was dragged into the whirl. He hoped to dance away grief and humiliation; he wished to have the love of life in his blood again; he longed to be gay, he as well as the others. And he danced till the walls went round, and he no longer knew what he was doing. Who was it he had got hold of in the crowd? She was light and supple, and he felt that streams of fire went from one to the other. Ah, Marianne! While Gösta danced with Marianne, Sintram sat in his sledge before the door, and beside him stood Melchior Sinclair. The great land-owner was impatient at being forced to wait for Marianne. He stamped in the snow with his great snow-boots and beat with his arms, for it was bitter cold. “Perhaps you ought not to have played Marianne away to Gösta,” said Sintram. “What do you mean?” Sintram arranged his reins and lifted his whip, before he answered:— “It did not belong to the tableau, that kissing.” The powerful land-owner raised his arm for a death-blow, but Sintram was already gone. He drove away, whipping the horse to a wild gallop without daring to look back, for Melchior Sinclair had a heavy hand and short patience. He went now into the dancing-room to look for his daughter, and saw how Gösta and Marianne were dancing. Wild and giddy was that last polka. Some of the couples were pale, others glowing red, dust lay like smoke over the hall, the wax-candles gleamed, burned down to the sockets, and in the midst of all the ghostly ruin, they flew on, Gösta and Marianne, royal in their tireless strength, no blemish on their beauty, happy in the glorious motion. Melchior Sinclair watched them for a while; but then he went and left Marianne to dance. He slammed the door, tramped down the stairs, and placed himself in the sledge, where his wife already waited, and drove home. When Marianne stopped dancing and asked after her parents, they were gone. When she was certain of this she showed no surprise. She dressed herself quietly and went out in the yard. The ladies in the dressing-room thought that she drove in her own sledge. She hurried in her thin satin shoes along the road without telling any one of her distress. In the darkness no one recognized her, as she went by the edge of the road; no one could think that this late wanderer, who was driven up into the high drifts by the passing sledges, was the beautiful Marianne. When she could go in the middle of the road she began to run. She ran as long as she was able, then walked for a while, then ran again. A hideous, torturing fear drove her on.