“Have you forgotten what you were like last year?” answers Fru Falkenberg. “You were nice and young then, and never said such things.” “No, I never said such things. To think you should remember that! But you scolded me one evening last year too. I said how beautiful you were that evening, and you said no, you weren't beautiful any more; and you called me a child, and told me not to drink so much.” “Yes, so I did,” says Fru Falkenberg, with a laugh. “So you did, yes. But as to your being beautiful or not, surely I ought to know when I was sitting looking at you all the time?” “Oh, you child!” “And this evening you're lovelier still.” “There's some one coming!” Two figures rise up suddenly behind the lilacs. Fruen and the young engineer. Seeing it is only me, they breathe more easily again, and go on talking as if I did not exist. And mark how strange is human feeling; I had been wishing all along to be ignored and left in peace, yet now it hurt me to see these two making so little account of me. My hair and beard are turning grey, I thought to myself; should they not respect me at least for that? “Yes, you're lovelier still tonight,” says the man again. I come up alongside them, touching my cap carelessly, and pass on. “I'll tell you this much: you'll gain nothing by it,” says Fruen. And then: “Here, you've dropped something,” she calls to me. Dropped something? My handkerchief lay on the path; I had dropped it on purpose. I turned round now and picked it up, said thank you, and walked on. “You're very quick to notice things of no account,” says the engineer. “A lout's red-spotted rag.... Come, let's go and sit in the summer-house.” “It's shut up at night,” says Fruen. “I dare say there's somebody in there.” After that I heard no more. My bedroom is up in the loft in the servants' quarters, and the one open window looks out to the shrubbery. When I come up I can still hear voices down there among the bushes, but cannot make out what is said. I thought to myself: why should the summer-house be shut up at night, and whose idea could it be? Possibly some very crafty soul, reckoning that, if the door were always kept locked, it would be less risky to slip inside one evening in good company, take out the key, and stay there. Some way down along the way I had just come were two people walking up--Captain Bror and the old lady with the shawl. They had been sitting somewhere among the trees, no doubt, when I passed by, and I fell to wondering now if, by any chance, I could have been talking to myself as I walked, and been overheard. Suddenly I see the engineer get up from behind the bushes and walk swiftly over to the summer-house. Finding it locked, he sets his shoulder against the door and breaks it open with a crash. “Come along, there's nobody here!” he cries. Fru Falkenberg gets up and says: “Madman! Whatever are you doing?” But she goes towards him all the same.