Egholm's mind was so keen that he saw every detail. Difficulties were disposed of as fast as they appeared.
Not till the last of the plates glided into the fixing solution did he come to himself, and then to find his heart pumping like the steam-turbine at full speed. It was always like that when he had been long at work in the dark-room. He threw open the door and went out, but the light and the fresh air turned him dizzy and blind for the moment; he staggered to a bench, and had to sit there some time before he recovered.
Hedvig knew how to make herself respected. She and her father glared at each other with eyes alert and claws ready, but it was rarely anything more came of it. She had a place at the baker's, running errands for six _kroner_ a month, which was no small sum for a girl still at school. Anyhow, it was practically half their rent.
Yet she was a strange little creature, not like other children, and her confidence slipped somehow between her mother's fingers.
Many a night the keyhole of the door to her little room still showed a speck of light by the time the clock struck twelve, or even one. Her mother lay anxiously listening to Egholm's snore; there was no saying what terrible thing might happen if he were to wake and find it out. But Hedvig would listen to reproaches the next morning with an unfathomable expression on her face, or smile, and shake her head. The pocket of her dress bulged with a new novel every other day.
"You should tell your mother what it _says_ in those silly books you're always reading," said Fru Egholm admonishingly.
"Oh, you'd never understand a word of it," was all Hedvig answered.
One day she had stuck up a picture over her bed, showing a man and a woman, tied together with a rope, flinging themselves into the water from a bridge. A yellow half-moon shone through the tree-tops and was reflected in the water. Hedvig stood quietly, apparently indifferent, as her mother tore it down and told in vehement words how sinful it was to look at such things. But when her mother moved to hold it over the lamp, the girl flung herself suddenly in front of her with wild screams, and would not be brought to her senses until she had the horrible picture safely put away in her workbox.