"I was listening to a voice last night--a voice within me. All unspeakable things it said. In a word, I resolved to take a great decision, if you think you can advise me to do it."
"Ho!" said Rolandsen. "You're full of bitter words to-day. Sitting there lashing out all the time. Talking of something else, you'll have that hair of yours falling off before long. There's too much of it."
"Do you know Børre the organ-blower? There's a girl of his I could have if I cared."
Olga burst out laughing at that, and stared at him.
"For Heaven's sake don't sit there smiling like that. It only makes me wilder than ever in love."
"Oh, you're quite mad," says Olga softly, flushing red.
"Sometimes I think to myself: perhaps she laughs up at me that way just to make me lose my senses all the more. That's how they kill ducks and geese, you know, jab them a little in the head with a knife, and then they swell, and it makes them all the finer."
Olga answered offendedly, "I don't do anything of the sort; you need not think so." And she rose, and made as if to go indoors.
"If you go now," said Rolandsen, "I shall only come in after you, and ask your father if he's read the books."
"Well, I didn't come to see him, anyway. But you, Olga, you're bitter and unapproachable this day. There's no wringing a drop of kindness out of you. You never heed me, you pass me by."
"But there's that girl of Børre's," said Rolandsen. "Her name's Pernille. I've heard them call her so myself. And her father blows the organ at church."
"Must you have a sweetheart dangling at every finger?" asked Olga seriously.
"Marie van Loos is my betrothed," he answered. "But it's all over between us now. Ask her yourself. I expect she'll be going away soon."
"Yes, mother, I'm coming," called Olga in through the window.
"Your mother wasn't calling you at all; she only looked at you."
"Oh, very well then! I'll go. But look you, Olga, you know what I mean too, only you don't answer me the same way, and say, Yes, I'm coming."
She opened the door. Rolandsen felt he had abased himself; she would not think of him now as the lordly man he was. He must raise himself once more in her esteem. It would never do to show himself so utterly defeated. So he began talking of death, and was highly humorous about it; now he would have to die, and he didn't care much if he did. But he had his own ideas about the funeral. He would make a bell himself to ring his knell, and the clapper should be fashioned from the thighbone of an ox, because he had been such a fool in life. And the funeral oration was to be the shortest ever known; the priest to set his foot upon the grave and simply say, "I hereby declare you mortified, null, and void!"