"I know. Of course, but--He is always taking things into his head.... How long it is since I saw you, Johannes!" He looked up at her, wondering if he had heard aright. Had she forgotten last Sunday, his great day! He answered: "I saw you on the pier on Sunday." "Oh yes," she said at once. "What a lucky thing you were able to help the mate with the dragging. You found the girl, didn't you?" He answered shortly in a hurt tone: "Yes, we found the girl." "Or how was it?" she went on, as though something had struck her; "was it you alone.... Oh, it doesn't matter. Well then, I hope you'll speak to your father about that. Good-night." She nodded with a smile, picked up her reins and rode away. When Victoria was out of sight Johannes wandered on into the wood, indignant and restless. He found Victoria standing by a tree quite alone. She was leaning against the tree and sobbing. Had she fallen off? had she hurt herself? He went up to her and asked: "Is there anything wrong?" She took a step towards him, spread out her arms and gave him a radiant look. Then she stopped, let her arms drop and answered: "No, there's nothing wrong with me; I got off and let the mare go home by herself.... Johannes, you mustn't look at me like that. You were looking at me down by the pond. What do you want?" He stammered: "What do I want? I don't understand...." "You're so broad there," she said, suddenly laying her hand on his. "You're so broad there, about the wrist. And then you're quite brown with the sun, brown as a berry...." He moved his hand, trying to take hers. Then she picked up her habit and said: "No, there was nothing the matter, you see. I only thought I'd go home on foot. Good-night." III Johannes went back to town. And days and years passed, a long, eventful time of work and dreams, of lectures and verse. He was getting on well, he had succeeded in writing a poem about Esther, "a Jew Girl who was made Queen of Persia," a work which was printed and for which he got paid. A second poem, "Love's Labyrinth," which he put into the mouth of Friar Vendt, made his name known. Ah, what was Love? A breeze whispering in the roses; no, a yellow phosphorescence in the blood. Love was a music hot as hell which stirs even old men's hearts to dance. It was like the daisy that opens wide to the coming of night, and it was like the anemone that closes at a breath and dies at a touch. Such a thing was Love. It might ruin its man, raise him up again and brand him anew; it might love me today, you tomorrow and him tomorrow night, so inconstant was it. But again it might hold like an unbreakable seal and burn with an unquenchable flame even to the hour of death, for so eternal was it. How then was Love?